
Class -.-^.r^ iOd^^ 
Book- .';' w 



Copyright 1\^ 



JO 



COPifRIGHT DEPOSm 



TEACHING TO READ 



TEACHING TO READ 



JAMES L. HUGHES 

INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS, TORONTO 

A.UTHOR OF " MISTAKES IN TEACHING,'* " HOW TO SECURE 

AND RETAIN ATTENTION,'* ** FROEBEL's EDUCATIONAL 

LAWS," "DICKENS AS AN EDUCATOR," ETC. 




NEW YORK 

A. S. BARNES & COMPANY 

1909 



i.'i- 



^ 



v^ , ^* 



Copyright, 1909 
By a. S. BARNES & COMPANY* 



LiaRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Co3ies Received 

JUN (i 18U9 

Ik Coyyn^nt Entry 

CLASS A XXL ti'. 



INTRODUCTION. 



There is no other subject in which the results 
have been so unsatisfactory as in reading, considering 
the amount of time devoted to it in school. The 
chief reason for the failure has been that the aim 
has been to train the race to read aloud instead of 
training it to read. The power of reading well 
means the power of getting thought from visible 
language rapidly, definitely and comprehensively. 
Very nearly all reading has to be done silently, yet 
in the past, the aim of the schools has been to train 
pupils to read aloud. Tested by the power of their 
pupils as a whole to read well aloud, or to read well 
silently, the work of the schools has been a lamentable 
failure. 

The teachers of the past believed that the way to 
train a child to be a good silent reader was to train 
him to read aloud. The reverse is true. The true 
way to make both good oral readers and good readers 
is to begin by making good silent readers. 

The aim in the past was to train pupils to read 
slowly; the true aim is to train them to read as fast 
as possible. The man who reads only two pages in 
the time in which he should be able to read three 
pages is handicapped for life. 

The process of the schools in the past has been 
yii 



viii INTRODUCTION. 

to use expression as a means of developing self- 
expression. The true process in teaching reading 
and every other subject is exactly the opposite. The 
process of the past weakened the power of both 
expression and self-expression. Expressing the 
thought of others in their language does not develop 
our power to express our own thought. On the other 
hand good training in self-expression — the expression 
of our own thought in our own language — does 
develop the power of expressing the thought of others 
in their language. Expression is not a true psycho- 
logical basis for self-expression; self-expression is 
the true psychological basis for expression. 

The aims of this book are : 

1. — To consider the meaning of learning to read, 
and to decide what new powers the child must gain in 
order to be a good reader. 

2. — To prevent the weakening of the child's 
natural power of self-expression by unnatural 
processes of expression. 

3. — To make clear the relationships between silent 
reading and reading aloud, between word recognition 
and thought recognition, between the expression of an 
author's thought in the author's language, the expres- 
sion of an author's thought in the child's own 
language, and the expression of the child's own 
thought in his own language. 

4. — To apply the same fundamental laws in teach- 
ing reading, that should be applied in teaching all 
other subjects; the law of self-activity, the law of 
self-active interest, the law of development by solving 



INTRODUCTION. ix 

a related sequence of appropriate and progressively 
difficult problems, and the law of repetition of 
operative processes instead of repetition of words. 

5. — To show that the processes of learning to 
speak a language and of learning to read it are not 
similar processes, and that it is necessarily illogical 
to try to follow the process of learning to speak 
while teaching the process of learning to read. 
Speaking is natural, visible language is artificial. In 
speaking thought suggests language, in reading 
language suggests thought. 

6. — To prove that a great deal of time has been 
wasted, and a great deal of power lost in the past by 
making the process of learning to read a long instead 
of a short process, an uninteresting instead of an 
interesting process, a dwarfing instead of a developing 
process, a process of responsive activity instead of a 
process of self-activity, and a memorizing instead of 
an operative process. 

7. — To outline the steps that should be taken to 
give the child the power of automatic word recogni- 
tion in a few weeks, so that he may be able to give 
his undivided attention to the thought of the 
selection he is reading. The power of expression is 
inevitably and permanently weakened by allowing a 
child to try to read aloud, if he has to give conscious 
attention to the words themselves. 

8. — To suggest simple, interesting and effective 
plans for preserving and developing the child's 
natural powers of self-expression. 

9. — To indicate some ways in which an unlimited 
supply of most useful reading matter may be provided 
at the lowest possible cost. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Meaning op Learning to Eead 1 

II. The Logical Order of the Steps in Learning 

TO Read — and to Read Aloud 8 

III. General Principles , 29 

IV. Objective Methods op Teaching Word Recog- 

nition ^ 38 

V. The Phonic Method 52 

VI. Teaching how to Recognize Visible Lan- 
guage , 73 

VII. Expression 117 

VIII. Variety in Reading Matter for Primary 

Classes 123 



TEACHING TO READ 



CHAPTER V 

THE MEANING OF LEARNING TO READ 

In order to decide wisely in regard to the best 
method of teaching children to read, it is essential to 
get a clear conception of the new elements of power 
the child has to acquire and develop by the process 
of learning to read. Confused or indefinite ideals 
naturally lead to incorrect and imperfect methods of 
teaching. What new powers come to a child when 
he learns to read? What does it mean to learn to 
read? 

Reading is generally accepted as meaning to read 
aloud. Much confusion has resulted from this gen- 
eral misconception. Reading is the power of getting 
thought from visible language. ^ It is the power of 
recognizing in visible form the language with which 
the child is already familiar in the spoken form.> 
A child may become a great reader and may possess 
the highest skill as a reader without being trained 
to read well orally. A good reader is one who can 
extract thought accurately, comprehensively and 
rapidly from visible language. The best reader is 

1 



3 TEACHING TO EEAD 

the man who can most rapidly, most comprehen- 
sively, and most definitely, get thought from vis- 
ible language. Few people can read rapidly enough. 
The schools have made no systematic effort, in the 
past, to develop the power of rapid, comprehensive, 
and accurate extraction of thought from written 
or printed matter. They have wasted the time of 
the child, and generally dwarfed his powers by tire- 
some and discouraging attempts to train him to 
read aloud before he has been trained to read. This 
error has weakened the power of good oral reading, 
and what is much more to be deplored, it has pre- 
vented the proper development of the power of good 
reading, which means accurate, comprehensive and 
rapid thought-getting from visible language. 

Oral reading is the power of expressing orally 
the words of visible language in such a way as to 
reveal the thought of the author, c^'^eading is a 
means of gaining thought; oral reading is a means 
of expressing thought. 

A child may express orally, his own thought or 
the thought of another person. When the thought 
of the other person is revealed in visible form, he 
is called an author. The correct process of train- 
ing a child to express his own thought orally is 
very different from the process of training him to 
express an author^s thought orally. The child may 
express an author's thought orally either in the 
language of the author or in his own language. The 
intellectual operations in these two processes are 
different, and the essential difference should be un- 
derstood and remembered by teachers. The distinc- 
tion between expression and self-expression is vital. 
Self-expression is infinitely greater than expression. 

The great efforts of teachers in the past, not only 



TEACHING TO EEAD 3 

in reading but in other subjects, have been put forth 
to develojD expression, not self-expression. The fact 
is, that the only true psychological path to good ex- 
pression is through a well developed power of self- 
expression. The real power in good expression is 
self-expression. All expression in which the vital 
element is not self-expression must be mechanical. 
The power of oral expression of an author's 
thought in the authoi-^s language is psycholog- 
ically very different from the power of self-expres- 
sion in oral language. Most teachers yet believe 
that by training children to read orally they are 
developing the power of oral self-expression. They 
are really training only the mechanism of expres- 
sion, and doing even this in the least effective way. 
The real self-hood of the child is not awakened by 
the process of oral reading. 

In order to begin to study the true psychological 
process by which a child should learn to read it is 
necessary to make a clear distinction between: — 
1. Word recognition by the child, 
3. Thought recognition by the child, 

3. The expression of an author's thought in the 
child's language, 

4. The expression of an author's thought in the 
author's language, 

5. The expression of the child's own thought in 
his own language. 

The fundamental error in teaching reading is to 
compel or to allow the child to try to read aloud 
before he has acquired two powers: automatic word 
recognition and accurate thought extraction. A 
child should read silently as soon as he has acquired 
control of the elements of word recognition, and he 
should at first be allowed to sound words aloud in 



4 TEACHING TO EEAD 

order to be able to recognize them as representing 
the oral words of his language which he already 
uses. But he should not read orally till he is able 
to perform the operations of word recognition and 
thought extraction without conscious effort. So long 
as a child has to give any part of his conscious at- 
tention to the recognition of the words in a sentence, 
he has only a portion of his intellectual power left 
for recognizing and relating the thoughts which it 
contains. So long as he has to devote any of his 
conscious attention either to word recognition or to 
thought extraction and relationship he has only a 
portion of his intellectual power left for thought ex- 
pression. 

It may be laid down as a fundamental law that 
when a child or a man is asked to perform any com- 
plex operation, he should be able to give his direct 
or primary attention to the highest element, or 
stage, in the complex processes. The processes sub- 
ordinate to the highest should be so thoroughly un- 
der his control that he can perform them automat- 
ically, or without conscious effort. When a child is 
expressing thought in writing, for instance, he should 
not require to think about the forms of the let- 
ters. Letter formation should have become auto- 
matic, or else the child must give a portion of his 
mental effort to the construction of the letters, and 
he will have only a part of his mind left to do his 
thinking. If a man is able to concentrate his mind 
fully on his subject while writing, he cannot be 
conscious of the fact that there are letters or words, 
or grammatical rules, or laws of style. He thinks, 
and the language is organized, and the visible words 
formed, without direct conscious effort on his part. 
His primary attention is given to his subject; his 



TEACHING TO EEAD 5 

secondary attention directs all the subordinate ele- 
ments of expression. The well-trained man is con- 
scious of the highest element only — his subject. 
His primary attention should be wholly given to 
the recognition of the increasingly vivid and pro- 
gressively comprehensive revelations he is receiv- 
ings and to definite thinking in regard to them as 
related to what he already knows about the subject 
under consideration. His subconsciousness should 
attend to the language and the letter forms neces- 
sary to express his thoughts in visible form. After 
he has concluded his thinking, he should of course 
go over his written expression of his thought, giv- 
ing his primary attention to the language he has 
used, and improving it so as to make it as perfect 
as possible in definiteness and in style. 

Each child has two styles of writing — the writ- 
ing he does in his writing book and the writing he 
does when he is writing an original composition or 
essay. In the first case his primary attention is 
given to the form of the letters as he writes them, 
in the second case his primary attention should be 
given to the thought he wishes to express. The sec- 
ond is the only true test of his writing. 

Oral reading is a complex operation, consisting of 
three processes — the recognition of the words, the 
recognition of the author's thought, and the expres- 
sion of this thought definitely with properly related 
emphasis.) The child's attention should not be dis- 
tracted from the highest element of his work by 
having to pay conscious attention to the subordinate 
elements. He cannot acquire thought as accurately, 
as comprehensively, and as rapidly as he ought to 
acquire it, if he has to give part of his primary at- 
tention to the recognition of the words he has to 



6 TEACHING TO EEAD 

read. Few children ever recover from the dwarfing 
of their natural powers of expression by the un- 
natural attempts to read aloud when the primary- 
attention has to be paid chiefly or in any appreciable • 
degree to the recognition of the words. The earlier 
stages of reading aloud are usually mere efforts to 
sound the words of the selection. Eeading aloud 
should never be a monotonous droning. It should 
be oral expression of thought which was first the 
thought of the author, but which has become the 
thought of the reader. 

But, it is often urged, that we encourage the child 
to begin to write his thoughts as soon as he is ac- 
quainted with enough letter powers to make even a 
few words. We do not wait till he can write per- 
fectly before training him to express his thoughts 
in writing, and both his power of thinking and his 
power of expression in writing are improved by his 
effort. Why should we not begin with oral reading 
as soon as the child can begin to recognize a few 
words ? 

The supposed parallel between the two eases does 
not exist. In the first case there is no interference 
with the child's thinking, except the subconscious 
effort he has to make in expressing his thought after 
it has been conceived and is ready for expression. 
In the second case the distraction is caused through 
the difficulties experienced before the thought is 
ready to be expressed. It is perfectly philosophical 
to train the child to express his thoughts either orally 
or in writing before the oral means or the written 
means of expression is perfect. But it is not wise 
to ask a child to try to express thought which he 
cannot possibly comprehend clearly and at the same 
time compel him to give his most direct attention 



TEACHING TO EEAD 7 

and his best intellectual energy to the recogni- 
tion of the visible form of the thought he is asked 
to interpret and express. Thinking and expression 
are interrelated, and each reacts upon the other, but 
the dominant element in the relationship is the 
thinking. The power of expression is the subcon- 
scious or secondary department, the thinking is the 
conscious or primary department. The expression 
cannot be clear unless the thought is clear. When 
the thought becomes definite, and related, and log- 
ical in the mind, expression becomes correspondingly 
clear and logical, and with training and practice and 
faith it becomes spontaneously responsive to the 
operations of the mind. 

Learning to read is the process by which the child 
discovers that the language he uses already orally 
may be recorded in visible form, and by which he 
learns to recognize the visible forms of language so 
as to interpret them readily and get new thought 
from them. Learning to read orally is the process 
by which the child is trained not only to recognize 
language in its visible forms, and get thought clearly 
from visible language, but also to express the thought 
orally in the words of the author. 



CHAPTER II 

THE LOGICAL ORDER OF THE STEPS IN LEARNING TO 
READ — AND TO READ ALOUD 

The first step in teaching how to read is to guide 
the child in discovering that its own oral language 
may be represented in visible form and re-inter- 
preted into oral language. He knows when he comes 
to school that mother and father and other adults 
can look at the marks in a book or paper and tell 
him the story they find there, but it is an im- 
portant step in his experience to reveal to him the 
fact that his own words may be made visMe and 
then recognized and expressed by others. C^ne of 
the best plans for doing this is to ask the child to 
say something about his dog, or the baby, or any 
of the many interesting things related to his own 
life and experience. His exact words should be 
written on the blackboard by the teacher. If there 
are several pupils about to begin the mysterious 
process of learning to read, each one should give a 
short sentence to be written on the board. When 
all the sentences have been written, the teacher 
should send to another room for a senior pupil and 
ask him to tell each child what he said to the teacher. 

In a school where there is only one teacher, a 
senior pupil should be sent out of the room while 
the little ones tell their stories. He should return 
when the stories have been written on the black- 
board. This exercise will arouse a deep personal in- 

8 



TEACHING TO READ 9 

terest in the work of reading and awaken a desire for 
the possession of the power to make oral language 
visible and to translate visible language into oral 
language. It may be made the basis of a perma- 
nent interest in reading and the^ beginning of a de- 
sire to read stories for themselves?) Under the guid- 
ance of a skilful and sympathetic teacher it opens 
up a new realm of power and of attractive mystery. 

Having developed an interest in the power of 
finding wonderful stories in the printed marks in 
the books^ the next step is to reveal the powers 
of these marks and show how what they say may be 
understood. Whatever plan or method may be 
adopted to train the child to recognize language 
in its visible forms^ it is clear that by some means 
he must gain the power of word recognition before he 
can read either silently or aloud. Word recogni- 
tion is the essential basis of all readings the only 
possible basis of reading. The various so-called 
methods of teaching reading are really methods of 
teaching the power of word recognition. The best 
method of teaching word recognition is the one which 
makes the child most independent of the teacher 
and gives him the power of rapid and accurate wot-d 
recognition in the shortest time, if at the same time 
it develops alertness of mind, definiteness in ob- 
servation and reasoning and relating ability. But, 
whatever method of enabling the child to recognize 
words is adopted, the power to do so without con- 
scious effort must be developed before -the child can 
read. Eeading and recognizing words should not be 
confounded. 

When the child is able to recognize words he may 
at once begin the practice of silent reading, which 
is the power of gaining thought from visible Ian- 



10 TEACHING TO READ 

guage without expressing it. Silent reading should 
precede reading aloud ; first, because it is a less com- 
plex process than reading aloud; second, because to 
be able to read well silently reduces the danger of 
making reading aloud a mechanical performance; 
third, because it makes thought-gaining the true pur- 
pose of reading; fourth, because reading aloud, if 
practised before the power of rapid, comprehensive, 
and accurate thought extraction from visible lan- 
guage has been developed, is the most certain way to 
prevent the cultivation of this vitally important 
power, the loss of which robs reading of its supreme 
Value; fifth, because the power to read well and 
rapidly silently is the only power that can make it 
possible to read well aloud ; and sixth, because when 
children begin to learn to read even at the age of 
eight or nine, and they should certainly not begin 
earlier, they are too immature to be able to interpret 
an author's meaning freely and expressively in the 
words of the author. 

One of the misleading conceptions of the past that 
continues to confuse the vision of teachers is that 
oral reading is more important than silent reading. 
We forget the changed conditions of life. Individ- 
ual reading has increased with rapid strides. New 
conditions have made it impossible and unnecessary 
that there should be much reading aloud. All the 
advantages that can be claimed for the practice of 
reading aloud may be granted without reservation, 
however, without acknowledging that it is compar- 
able in value, either educationally or practically, to 
the power of accurate, comprehensive and rapid 
thought-getting from printed matter. A very small 
minority really requires to read aloud ; every one 
who wishes to increase his store of knowledge or 



TEACnmG TO BEAD 11 

to keep up with the progress of the world must read 
a great deal silently, often in the odd moments on 
the train or between the hours of work. 

Many of the small minority whose duties require 
them to read aloud read without notable ease, grace, 
or effectiveness, and this should long ago have led 
educators to question the wisdom of continuing an 
educational practice which so manifestly produced 
unsatisfactory results. But the great body of edu- 
cators do not really teach oral reading with the pur- 
pose of producing a race of good oral readers. Those 
who think about this matter at all know that com- 
paratively few will ever be called upon to read 
much aloud. 

Reading aloud has been practised so universally in 
schools, because teachers have had the erroneous 
idea that oral reading is the proper way to qualify 
the race for proper reading — real reading — reading 
for clearer intellectual vision, for the kindling influ- 
ence of literature, and science, and history, and 
other departments of human knowledge, for the 
acquisition of the inheritance bequeathed to each 
individual by the leaders of the past. Silent read- 
ing has been the real aim of the teaching of reading, 
but the only path that teachers have taken to reach 
silent reading has been the wearisome path of oral 
reading. By being forced to take this path few 
have ever become good silent readers, able to ex- 
tract thought rapidly, accurately, and comprehen- 
sively from printed matter, and fewer still have 
ever become good oral readers able to reveal to others 
the full richness and strength and beauty of the 
thought of the great literary leaders. The popula- 
tion of North America is now about ninety mil- 
lions. Are there more than ninety men and women 



12 TEACHING TO READ 

in Xorth America who can successfully interpret 
the true meaning of the masterpieces of literature 
by reading them aloud? One in a million of the 
population of what may fairly be considered the most 
universally educated people in the world, if not the 
most thoroughly educated, does not seem to be a very 
gratifying result of the operation of a method, if its 
aim is to train to read well orally. 

^^he fact is that the value of real reading, not 
reading aloud, has been the only ground on which 
the great amount of time devoted to reading in the 
schools could possibly be defended. Teachers have 
worked under the delusion that the true way to teach 
pupils to read well is to make them read aloud, and 
this misconception has prevented the proper develop- 
ment both of good reading and of good oral read- 
ing. One thing should be remembered by those 
who still urge that the great aim in teaching readiag 
should be to make good oral readers, and that is that 
the only kind of printed matter that is read aloud 
is what is technically called literature. Books on 
science, or art, or music, or philosophy, or educa- 
tion, or even history, are not read aloud in public, 
and very rarely, if ever, in private. Few readers, 
comparatively, read much aloud after they leave 
school, and even the few who do so read within a 
v^ limited range of literature. 

<CThe true and logical order in teaching reading is 
to give a thorough training in silent reading before 
asking the child to read aloud, if we wish to make 
him either a good reader or a good oral reader. The 
universal process in the past has been to try to make 
good silent readers by oral reading, the true process 
is just the reverse of this. Silent reading is the 
true way to lead to good oral reading. \ 



TEACHING TO READ 13 

But it is claimed by some thoughtful teachers 
that they must necessarily require the pupils to read 
aloud in order to discover whether they understand 
what they are reading or not. The answer to this 
is twofold: firsts the test proposed is not a reliable 
one^ many children can read a stanza of poetry with 
correct expression who cannot give an accurate or 
adequate idea of its meaning; second, the real test 
of a child's understanding of a selection is to ask 
him to explain its meaning in his own words and 
not in the author's words. This should be the fourth 
step in learning to read. The pupils should be 
systematically trained to read with the view of re- 
porting the meaning of the selections given to them, 
sometimes in writing, and as often as possible orally, 
but always in their own language and not the lan- 
guage of the author. Three definite aims should be 
kept persistently in view in this department of the 
work of teaching how to read. The pupils should 
be trained to discover the author's thought, accu- 
rately, comprehensively, and as rapidly as possible. 
In securing these vitally important results the 
teacher may adopt a variety of plans to awaken and 
retain the interest of the pupils. One of the plans 
that may be used in all grades is to have in each 
class large collections of short clippings from chil- 
dren's papers, magazines, or newspapers, pasted on 
cards. These should be distributed on the desks 
with the clippings on the under side of the cards. 
When every child has a card a signal should be given 
and the cards should be turned over. When a suf- 
ficient time has been given the cards should be placed 
on the desks, with the blank side upward, and the 
children asked to stand and tell the class what they 
have learned from the selections on their cards. 



14 TEACHmG TO READ 

Short stories, especially humorous stories, form ex- 
cellent material for this exercise. As the children 
grow older, brief statements about science, or his- 
tory, or biography, or any department of knowledge 
in which children should naturally be interested, 
should form part of the reading matter on the cards 
for the silent sight reading exercises. The whole 
class may be tested on the same selection by having 
it clearly written on the blackboard and covered with 
a curtain. When the curtain has been dropped again 
over the selection each child may write an account 
of what he has learned by reading what was written 
on the board. Other plans for conducting such an 
exercise will suggest themselves to teachers, but those 
who are awake to the importance of thought-getting 
from visible language as one of the most essential 
elements of a good education, will not be satisfied 
till they have thousands of card clippings arranged 
in sets for use in their classes. The pupils will 
gladly aid not only in cutting and mounting the 
clippings, but also in gathering material from which 
the teacher may make the selections. 

It is singular that teachers should so long have 
overlooked the importance of rapid reading. The 
man who reads slowly is handicapped through life. 
Accuracy and comprehensiveness should of course 
never be sacrificed for speed in reading, but great 
rapidity of reading power may be developed without 
loss of the power to gain an accurate and compre- 
hensive understanding of the meaning of the matter 
that is read. Indeed those who are trained to read 
rapidly by proper methods are able to concentrate 
their attention so definitely that they can take more 
from a chapter or a book than those who read more 
slowly. An old rule for good reading ran: — 



TEACHING TO EEAD 15 

*' Learn to read slow, all other graces 
Will follow in their proper places." 

This couplet referred to reading aloud, which was 
the only reading considered until recently. For oral 
reading the advice is good. The opposite advice is 
the proper rule to follow in reading. We should 
train children by every plan we can devise to read 
well, that is to get as much as possible of the au- 
thor's thought and emotion from his writings, and 
each child should be trained to do this as rapidly 
as possible. If a child has been trained to do as 
much in four minutes as he would otherwise have 
taken five minutes to do, his power of accumulating 
thought from books has been increased twenty-five 
per cent. All people cannot reach the same stand- 
ard of rapidity in reading, but each one should be 
trained to read at his best rate. 

Silent reading at sight, the results of which are 
to be reported to the teacher and the class, should 
be a specific department of the training in reading, 
and one of the best elements in such training con- 
sists of time tests in which a limited time is allowed 
to get the full meaning of the selection after the 
curtain has been removed or the cards turned over. 
It adds to the interest and the concentration of the 
class to pass the cards after each child has reported 
and give the same time as before to the new readers, 
after which they may report any part omitted by 
the first readers in the stories or statements. 

When the pupils are able to get thought rapidly, 
accurately, and comprehensively from printed mat- 
ter without having to give attention by conscious 
effort and to use part of their intellectual power in 
recognizing the words, they are ready to begin to 
practise reading aloud. They do not need to learn 



16 TEACHING TO READ 

to read aloud. Learning to read aloud has been the 
chief cause of bad oral reading. The early stages 
of the methods formerly used in what was called 
^^ learning to read/' but which was in reality an at- 
tempt at learning to read aloud^ inevitably inter- 
fered with the further development of the child's 
natural power of expression, and worse still, in most 
cases weakened this power. All teachers recognized 
this suggestive fact. There was no other advice that 
used to be so persistently given to children when 
they had finished their pitiable efforts at reading 
aloud in school as that contained in the sentences — 
'' Eead naturally/' and '^ Eead as you speak." All 
teachers knew that nearly all pupils were dwarfed 
in their power of thought expression by efforts to 
read aloud before they were ready to do so, and those 
who reflected knew that most children never fully 
regained their lost freedom and force in expression. 
Yet this blighting performance went on, and in most 
schools it still goes on. The child is asked to do an 
impossible thing, and when he inevitably does it in 
a mechanical way he is asked, often peevishly, why 
he does not do it in a natural way. If he were gifted 
with psychological vision he might reply: I am 
natural. My work is natural. I am doing in the 
only way a reasonable being could expect the totally 
unnatural thing you have asked me to do. It is 
unnatural for me to be able to express the thought 
of other people in the language of other people as 
naturally as I can express my own thought in my 
own language. When I am expressing my own 
thought I have only to think, and I am not even con- 
scious of the way in which I am thinking. My mind 
acts spontaneously and my power of speech responds 
to my thought automatically, and unless in some way 



TEACHING TO READ It 

I have the terrible misfortune of being made self- 
conscious, my powers of thinking and expressing 
will continue to act in perfectly interrelated har- 
mony, and be mutually developing as long as I live. 
As I am trained to think more logically, and as my 
mind is enriched and stimulated by the great 
thoughts of the race, and as my imagination develops, 
and I gain clearer visions of nature, and my fellow- 
men, and God, my language and all my powers of 
expression will improve responsively as my mind de- 
velops. But you are interfering with Nature's won- 
derful plan, and then censuring me for not being 
natural. You plead with me to ^^ read as I talk,'^ 
carelessly failing to remember that when I talk I 
speak as I think, and that when you make me try to 
read aloud before I can recognize the words without 
conscious effort, I am thinking what the names of 
the words are and usually trying to say some of them 
before I have fully decided what even their names 
are. The thought I could naturally express under 
such unnatural conditions would not be edifying. 
In obedience to you I try to report to you the result 
of my recollections of word forms and my discov- 
eries of new word forms. I cannot report the vital 
thought of the selection. I am not able to get it 
myself. Most of my intellectual power is employed 
in recognizing the words, and I say them to you as 
I recognize them. I can say some of them more 
freely than others, because I remember them more 
easily. It takes me longer to recognize some of 
them, or to discover the names of the new ones, so 
I name them in a mechanical way. I drawl some- 
times because I have not made up my mind fully 
what the next word is. I am ordered by you to do 
a mechanical work and I do it in a mechanical way, 



18 TEACHING TO READ 

which is the only possible way that I could do it. 
I am naturally unnatural when I go through a me- 
chanical process in a mechanical way. I am not try- 
ing to express thought, I am trying to recognize 
words and give you the result of my effort. When 
you compel me to try to make this process expressive 
you are asking me to give expression to what can- 
not possibly be expressive. It is natural to express 
thought — when it is my own, or has become clear to 
me. It is not natural to express words as words, 
and this is what you are asking me to do. When 
the thought is mine, either mine by origination, or 
mine by extraction from visible language used by 
others, I can express it. I can express it clearly and 
naturally, and with progressively developing power 
in my own words, and in due time, when I can per- 
form the essential subordinate operations without 
conscious effort, I shall be able to express the 
thoughts of others in their own language. But I 
cannot do so now because I cannot yet recognize 
even the words without a conscious intellectual ef- 
fort. So I fail because you ask me to do an im- 
possible thing. And the most serious result of your 
terrible blundering in my education is that my at- 
tempts at unnatural expression prevent the proper 
development of my natural powers of expression, 
and make me self-conscious — ^not of my strength but 
of my weakness. 

The reading hour should be one of the happiest 
hours of the day. Even the hour for reading aloud 
may be made a happy and very profitable hour, but 
many changes will have to be made before it produces 
a reasonable amount of happiness or profit. One 
of the most unreasonable practices in connection 
with the old-time reading lesson was the thought- 



TEACHING TO READ 19 

lessness of teachers in compelling a whole class to 
attend while one unfortunate pupil was grinding 
out his allotted sentence or paragraph. This, in 
most cases, added to the self-consciousness and 
wretchedness of the temporary victim, and was worse 
than a waste of time to the rest of the class. A 
class may gain a small amount of expressive power 
through unconscious imitation, if it listens to good 
oral reading, occasionally, but hearing poor reading 
regularly and listening because of external compul- 
sion must interfere with the development of the 
power of good oral expression both in speaking and 
reading. It would be vastly more profitable for the 
rest of the class to write, or draw, or do manual 
training work with cardboard, or raffia, or other avail- 
able materials while each individual pupil is read- 
ing. In order to save time three or four may have 
their readers open and stand ready to read during 
an oral reading lesson, one new pupil rising in turn 
when each reader finishes and takes his seat to go 
on with the other work that has been assigned. In 
this way the pupils may be engaged at profitable 
work and receive a training in concentration on 
specific work under distracting conditions, a very de- 
sirable training which is generally entirely overlooked 
in schools. 

" But every reading lesson should be a literature 
lesson and therefore all pupils should take part in 
it.^^ Correct ! Some day we shall read orally during 
the literature lessons only, and then oral reading 
and reading will both be better. 

The schools have almost universally failed to gain 
the true pedagogic lesson from the generally ac- 
knowledged fact that all children are naturally self- 
expressive. They are naturally self -expressive in the 



20 TEACHING TO READ 

readjustment and rearrangement of tablets, blocks, 
etc., in using plastic material, in the use of pencil 
or crayon, or brush, and in revealing their thoughts 
orally. Finding the pupils with this power of self- 
expression in good working order, the teacher should 
ask himself the question: Is this power only a 
temporary power, or should it continue to develop in 
harmony with the child's development and culture? 
There can be but one reasonable answer to this ques- 
tion. Every power for good may be developed, should 
be developed. But this natural power of expression 
is practically lost by nearly all children. How is it 
lost? Here is the teacher's opportunity to investi- 
gate. The Creator does not take the power away. 
Some one must be responsible. When power of 
any kind is lost it is lost by disuse or misuse. The 
power of free and effective oral self-expression has 
been lost in schools in both ways. Oral self-expres- 
sion has not been a definite aim with wise and per- 
sistent methods for its development by regular and 
enjoyable exercise, and the oral expression most 
practised has been oral expression merely in reveal- 
ing the thoughts of others, and in revealing these 
thoughts in the language of others. The neglect of 
proper methods for developing the child's wonder- 
ful powers of oral self-expression is a serious charge 
against teachers, but to confine the child's oral ex- 
pression mainly to oral reading in which every 
fundamental operation of the child's thinking and 
oral self-expression is interfered with is a violation 
of pedagogic principles which cannot be too strongly 
condemned. Both negatively and positively, both 
by disuse and misuse, the proper development of 
the child's natural power of oral self-expression has 
been arrested and distorted. 



TEACHING TO EEAD 21 

These lessons should be learned as the result of a 
careful investigation into the causes of loss of nat- 
uralness in oral self-expression. 

First, one of the chief aims in primary schools 
should be the preservation and development of the 
natural tendency and power of oral self-expression. 

Second, oral self-expression should not be criti- 
cised by personal criticism of the child either for in- 
accuracy of language, style of delivery, or erroneous 
statement. The child should receive credit for his 
effort. The fact that he thinks incorrectly is not 
a reasonable ground for censure by his teacher. If 
he has honestly tried to think about the question at 
issue, and has freely expressed his views, it is grossly 
unjust for his teacher to laugh at his errors or cen- 
sure him for them. His views should be treated 
with respect. They need not be accepted as cor- 
rect. The teacher should lead him to see the omitted 
or unknown step or steps in his thinking, but he 
should never ridicule or scold him or give him bad 
marks because he is unable to think as well as an 
adult. If he could do so he would not need a teacher 
to train him to think. The important aim should 
be to preserve the child's self-respect, and self-faith, 
so that he may not acquire a weakening self-con- 
sciousness. To censure him arrests the development 
of both his power to think and his power to give 
expression to his thoughts. His errors in speech 
should be noted for the guidance of his teacher in 
lessons in language to the whole class. Impersonal 
criticism and full explanations of reasons for reject- 
ing one form of language and accepting the other, 
if given to the class, will, in due time, enable each 
child to overcome his weakness and his errors in 
the use of language, and by this course his natural 



33 TEACHING TO READ 

freedom and force in oral self-expression will be pre- 
served. 

Third, the child should not be compelled to try- 
to do any oral work during his early years in school 
which will interfere with the development of his 
natural power of self-expression. His oral self-ex- 
pression should be the expression of thought, of 
thought that is clear to his own mind, of thought 
that is really his own whether it is original or not. 
He must have attained to a high degree of power 
in several departments of culture before he should 
be expected to read aloud without loss — definite loss 
— of the power of oral expression. He must have 
learned to recognize words instantaneously without 
conscious effort; he must have acquired the ability 
to extract thought very rapidly from words, phrases, 
and sentences, and he must have gained the complex 
power of accurately using the author's language in 
expressing the thought which he receives from the 
selection he is reading. 
^ If children w^ere trained to read well without be- 
} ing asked to read aloud till they were fourteen or 
/ fifteen years of age it would be a great advantage in 
/ many ways. They would enjoy reading as a means 
I of acquiring thought, they would retain their nat- 
l ural power of expression, increased by special train- 
ing and by general intellectual culture, and they 
should at that age be able to recognize visible lan- 
guage so rapidly and take from it the shades of feel- 
ing and depth of thought expressed by it so thor- 
oughly as to be able to read aloud without injury 
to their natural powers of oral expression. The 
limit of their power of oral expression would de- 
pend on their natural ability and the character and 
extent of their training in oral expression. 



TEACHING TO EEAD 23 

As a co-ordinating step naturally leading from 
free self-expression of thought orally in the child^s 
own language to free and natural expression of an 
author^s thought in the author's language, the child 
should be led to recite brief selections, after study- 
ing their meaning carefully and committing them 
to memory so thoroughly that he is not conscious of 
an effort in remembering the language. Eeciting 
is more nearly allied to speaking original matter 
than oral reading is. It is an intermediate step be- 
tween original speaking and oral reading, and there- 
fore it should follow original speaking or oral self- 
expression as a final preparation for oral reading. 
When a child is reciting, the language and thought 
expressed have really been made his own language 
and thought, although they are not his by origina- 
tion. They come to him, the thought to his mind 
and the language to his lips, as freely as his own 
thought and language come to him in oral self-ex- 
pression, but they come by entirely different mental 
processes. 

In oral self-expression thought precedes language^ 
in recitation and in oral reading the language pre- 
cedes the thought. Language, by the wonderful ar- 
rangement of the Creator, spontaneously comes to 
express original thought, but in reciting or oral read- 
ing, the thought comes from the language. In speak- 
ing, thought suggests language; in reciting and oral 
reading, language suggests thought. 

In oral expression, reciting, and oral reading, the 
thought should be the dominant element in the mind 
of the child. The language in each case should re- 
ceive his subconscious or secondary attention; his 
conscious or primary attention should be given to 
the thought. In the first case his secondary at- 



24 TEACHING TO EEAD 

tention is given to language as the expression of 
thought, in the second and third cases it is given 
to language as the present source of thought to 
him. In oral expression his primary attention is 
given to the origination of thought, in reciting it is 
given to remembering thought, and in oral reading 
to the comprehension of thought. In each case 
thought must be clear in the child's mind and must 
be consciously prepared by him for the enlighten- 
ment or amusement of those who hear him, before 
he can properly express it. It is clear, therefore, 
from these considerations, that reciting is the logical 
step between oral self-expression and oral reading. 

It is of primary importance that no child should 
be compelled to recite or read aloud. Good teachers 
wait patiently till their pupils are willing or even 
anxious to recite before urging or even suggesting 
that they should do so. If they have not been made 
weakly self-conscious, they will be anxious to take 
their part in the recitation or reading exercises quite 
as soon as they should be permitted to do so. To 
urge them to do it before they are ready makes them 
weakly self-conscious, makes reciting a drudgery in- 
stead of a joy, and robs them of the development 
that ought to come from their efforts. There comes 
a time in the development of every child when he 
enjoys doing everything that will help to make him 
stronger in any department of his power. Most 
teachers unwisely try to make their pupils perform 
many good operations too early, and evil instead of 
good always results from such premature efforts. 

The steps in training children to read may be 
summarized as follows: 

1. Eevealing to the child the facts that its own 
oral language may be expressed in visible form and 



TEACHING TO EEAD 25 

re-interpreted orally, and that books may tell them 
more wonderful and more beautiful stories than 
even those that have been told by mother and father. 

2. Eapid word recognition. 

3. Power to extract thought rapidly, accurately, 
and comprehensively from visible language. 

4. Power to express orally and in writing the 
thought of the author in the child's own language. 

5. From the beginning — and entirely indepen- 
dent of the reading lessons — the child's wonderful 
natural powers of oral self-expression should be cul- 
tivated by methods that will not interfere with his 
spontaneity, or make him self-conscious. 

6. The recitation of perfectly memorized and 
well understood selections appropriate to the child's 
stage of development. 

7. When these six steps have been taken, the child 
is ready to begin to read aloud. The age at which 
he may begin to do so cannot be definitely fixed. 
That depends on his natural ability, his tempera- 
ment, and the methods of his teachers. He may be 
permitted to read aloud voluntarily long before he 
should be required to do so by his teacher. Eeading 
aloud should never be the nerve-straining, power- 
arresting process that it has been and still is in so 
many places. 

While decided objection has been taken to pre- 
mature attempts at reading aloud, it should be un- 
derstood that pupils must speak the words, when 
they are beginning the w^ork of word recognition, 
until they have become familiar with the way in 
which the different powers and sounds of letters 
coalesce to form words. This process of learning to 
recognize words is not reading, nor oral reading, but 
a step in learning to read. 



26 TEACHING TO EEAD 

Note 1. The best reading I ever heard a child 
do was done by a sixteen year old girl the first time 
she ever read aloud. I found her at sixteen unable 
to speak without great difficulty on account of stam- 
mering. She had never answered orally at school, 
and had never read aloud. I was indignant at 
teachers who had taught her carefully the correct 
grammatical forms of speech and yet had left her 
in a condition of inability to speak. I offered to 
guide her in overcoming her difficulty, and succeeded 
in winning her confidence and in enabling her to 
speak freely. I then without warning her previously 
asked her to read aloud to me. She at first shrank 
from the ordeal, but as she was in no sense afraid of 
me I persuaded her to make the experiment. I told 
her I wished her to read something entirely new to 
her. I was delighted to find when I went to my 
library that she had read very widely — though never 
aloud. ^^ Have you read Shakespeare ? ^^ " Yes.^^ 
'' Wordsworth ? '' " Yes.'' Burns, Longfellow, 
Moore, Bryant, Byron, Whittier, Cowper, Holmes, 
were offered in turn, but these and others had been 
read. The first volume of poetry I found that she 
had not read was the poems of the Carey Sisters. I 
selected a poem, and she read it at sight with fluency, 
appreciation, and appropriateness of expression. 
She read as naturally as a child, free from self- 
consciousness, speaks, and with the mental concep- 
tions of a maturing mind. I was charmed and asked 
her to allow me to call my family to hear her read 
another poem. Again she shrank from the trial, but 
finally agreed when I assured her that she read bet- 
ter than any girl I had ever heard before. Again 
she read with ease and power. When she was read- 
ing her second poem two teachers called, one of them 



TEACHING TO EEAD 27 

a New York teacher who had studied under one of 
the leading teachers of oratory in the United States, 
and had read in public herself. I persuaded my 
pupil to read again a third selection, and they agreed 
with me that they had never heard any student 
whose reading was in all essential elements so satis- 
factory. 

Note 2. The best oral reader of Goethe's Faust 
or other difficult literature that it was ever my good 
fortune to hear was the late George Paxton Young, 
professor of Philosophy in Toronto University. He 
gave new meaning to an author when he read aloud 
to his friends. I asked him if he had a good teacher 
of oral reading when he was a boy. He told me that 
he never read aloud at school. His great power of 
expression resulted from two causes: he had more 
power than most men to see the author's thought 
accurately and comprehensively, and the natural re- 
lation between thought and expression had not been 
interfered with by his teachers. I found by care- 
fully watching him on many occasions that in silent 
reading, either of easy or difficult reading matter, 
he read at least two pages while I could read one, 
and he found more in each page than I did. 

Note 3. When I was a boy thirteen years old, 
my father was the teacher of our village school. 
Two deaf-mute children were brought to the school, 
and my father, having so much to do in teaching a 
large ungraded school, could not possibly find time 
to teach them, so he turned them over to me. I 
taught them and attended to my own lessons as well, 
so the deaf-mute boys did not receive a great deal 
of attention. They knew the double hand alphabet, 
having been taught it by their mother. I learned 
their manual alphabet, and I laid the apperceptive 



28 TEACHING TO READ 

centres of all the best things I have since learned 
about pedagogy and psychology in my efforts to find 
the way to reach their minds and educate them. 
They learned to read visible language with remark- 
able ease, and they became very rapid readers. They 
could read much more rapidly than their compan- 
ions in school or their brothers and sisters who could 
hear and speak. They learned to read, not to read 
orally. 



CHAPTEE III 

GENERAL PRINCIPLES 

The fundamental laws to be followed in teaching 
reading are the same general laws that should guide 
the teacher in teaching any other subject. 

1. Self-activity. The most important principle 
to follow in teaching any subject is the law of self- 
activity. Self-activity means the activity of the pu- 
pil in independent work. It does not mean activity 
in imitating the teacher, or in following the instruc- 
tions of the teacher or even the direct suggestions 
of the teacher. It means the activity of the pupil 
in accomplishing his own plans, in solving problems 
he has found for himself. The teacher can find no 
other test to decide the real value of her teaching 
in any subject, that is so simple and so definitely 
accurate as the question — Am I allowing my pupils 
the fullest opportunities for independent activity, 
which is the only real self-activity? The answer to 
this question should change the ordinary methods 
of teaching reading in all departments. 

The development of every teacher towards her 
best power in method is made by taking progressive 
steps in giving the children more and more inde- 
pendent work in finding and solving problems. 
Every time a teacher finds a way to reach a definite 
result by less work on her part and more vital work 
on the part of the pupils, she has taken a step in 
the path of true progress. The child^s real growth 

29 



30 TEACHING TO READ 

must be the result of self -activity, his independent 
effort to solve his own problems. The teacher's high- 
est skill lies in guiding his efforts without making 
him conscious of her interference. The wisdom of 
the teacher is essential in directing the immature 
minds of her pupils, but true wisdom never stands 
in the way of the self-activity of the child. The 
wisest teacher never forgets that the child, and not 
the knowledge he is to receive, is the centre of cor- 
relation. Eesponsive activity is better than mere pas- 
sivity on the part of the pupil, because it develops 
a more practical and effective type of character than 
mere receptivity, but activity in response to the sug- 
gestions or directions of another does little to de- 
velop the individuality or selfhood in a child and 
this is the great ideal of true education. 

2. Prollems. The child's power in any subject 
increases most rapidly and most definitely by over- 
coming a related sequence of well graded difficul- 
ties ; by solving a well arranged series of increasingly 
difficult problems. Problems in word recognition 
may be given as definitely and as systematically as 
in arithmetic or any other department of mathe- 
matics or science. The good teacher will use the 
largest possible variety of plans for making prob- 
lems, and the ideal teacher- always trains her pupils 
to find problems as well as to solve them. All chil- 
dren who have not been dwarfed by the unwise in- 
terference of their parents or teachers have the 
power to discover problems. The child's intellectual 
growth is so marvellously rapid before he goes to 
school because he has the privilege of finding most 
of his own problems. He is in a new world which 
is full of mysterious joys to him. If he is free, he 
finds many new problems every day. Most of them 



TEACHING TO READ 31 

he solves himself; a few of the more complex he 
brings to mother or father. He has naturally the 
power to see the problems related to his stage of de- 
velopment. His problems may be divided into two 
classes: those seen generally by nearly all children 
and those seen only or most clearly by children of 
his special intellectual organization and tendencies. 
Before he goes to school he is a problem finder as 
well as a problem solver. His power to solve prob- 
lems becomes more effective as his power to see 
problems grows more definite. His power to solve 
problems does not increase so rapidly or so truly by 
solving the problems of others as by solving his own. 
Speaking generally, the least effective problems for a 
child are those prepared by an adult. When the child 
goes to school his teacher usually makes him a prob- 
lem solver only, and thus his power of discovering 
problems is lost to an appalling extent. The power 
of seeing new problems is the most essential power 
in complete intellectual development. It alone starts 
the other intellectual powers and keeps them in vig- 
orous and developing activity. It provides the neces- 
sary work for the other intellectual powers. It 
should develop as rapidly as any other intellectual 
power till in adulthood it becomes insight or vision 
in relation to the material, the intellectual and the 
spiritual world. The teacher should aim to develop 
this power of problem finding as definitely as any 
other power of the child. Unfortunately it usually 
decreases as the child grows older. The schools have 
dissolved the natural and essential unity between 
problem finding and problem solving, and have made 
the child a problem solver only. 

But in reading the child has not even been al- 
lowed to solve problems. He has been expected to re- 



33 TEACHING TO EEAD 

member what his teacher has told him. Eemember- 
ing and recalling is not a very developing exercise. 
It is a storing exercise that produces its best re- 
sults when it acts naturally, as the indirect or in- 
cidental accompaniment of action which has been 
originated, directed, and executed by the individual 
himself who is expected to rememxber. Every subject 
should be learned so far as possible by operative pro- 
cesses, both problem finding and problem solving. 
To make reading largely a direct memory process 
robs it of its general developing power for the mind ; 
makes even memorizing a slow and wearisome task, 
instead of a vital, definite, and interesting process; 
prevents the development of a true interest in read- 
ing; and reduces the rate of reading, and the power 
to get thought accurately and comprehensively from 
visible language. 

In learning to read the child should be guided to 
the recognition of a progressive series of definitely 
related problems, and trained from the first day to 
solve these problems independently. Learning to 
read should not be a process of remembering and 
recognizing word forms, or letter forms. It should 
be a process of gaining power to use the elements 
of visible speech either by recognizing their sounds 
in word combinations, or in constructing visible 
words to represent the sound words with which the 
pupils are already familiar. These processes will 
at first be performed by conscious effort, but they 
should gradually become automatic and be directed 
by the subconscious power of the child. The recog- 
nition and solving of problems is the only way in 
which the pupil can use his self-activity in learning 
to read. 

There are two classes of problems in word recog- 



TEACHING TO EEAD 33 

nition, eye problems and ear problems. Beading 
has been taught exclusively as an eye problem. The 
pupils have been shown letters, or words, or phrases, 
or sentences on the blackboard or tablet, or in the 
primer, and trained to recognize them by some of 
the various methods of teaching word recognition. 
There is another and a much better way of present- 
ing the problems to the child for his solution. The 
usual plan is for the teacher to write the words or 
sentences and ask the pupil to sound them; it is 
much better for the teacher to sound the words and 
for the pupils to write them. Both plans should, of 
course, be used, but the ear problem in which the 
problem reaches the child's mind through his ear, 
is much more productive of good results than the 
eye problem in which the problem reaches the child's 
mind through his eye. In an ear problem the child 
has to make a more definite and comprehensive as- 
sociation of the form of a letter with its power or 
sound than he does in an eye problem. In the ear 
problem in word recognition the teacher pronounces 
the word as in dictating for spelling, carefully se- 
lecting only words whose visible symbols have al- 
ready been taught, and the child has to think of the 
consecutive sounds in the word and associate the 
proper letter with each sound in successive order to 
form the visible word. In the eye problem the child 
looks at each letter or word as it is presented to 
him in written or printed forms, and unites the 
sounds of the letters to make the oral word repre- 
sented by the visible forms. 

The teaching work while the pupils are out in class 
should consist mainly of ear problems; the work of 
pupils at the seats must, in the early stage of learn- 
ing to read, be largely the solving of eye problems. 



34 TEACHING TO READ 

Very soon, however, the best seat problems in word 
recognition are problems in the expression in visible 
form of the child's own thoughts. The construction 
of visible language by the child in ear problems or 
self-expression problems is very much more effective 
than the ordinary process which consists entirely of 
recognition of visible language or eye problems; be- 
cause the child's powers of recognition, relation, 
construction, and origination are more extensively 
and more effectively called into activity by the ear 
and expression problems than by eye problems. 

It will be of great service to the teacher, if she 
keeps persistently in mind the classification of the 
problems in the early steps in learning to read, into 
problems in construction and problems in recogni- 
tion. Problems in construction are more vitally ef- 
fective than problems in recognition in all subjects. 
Whenever it is possible, not only in reading but in 
all subjects, the child's thought should be construc- 
tively represented by the child himself in order to 
secure clearer and more extended thought and more 
perfect and more lasting remembrance. This funda- 
mental thought will transform the methods of teach- 
ing nearly all subjects when it is clearly understood 
by teachers. Reading is one of the subjects in which 
it should make most radical changes. 

3. Interest. Truly productive attention depends 
on the interest of the child. The only interest that 
retains its vitality is interest based on the child's 
happiness in solving new problems adapted to its 
stage of development and its knowledge. The child 
never loses interest when he is overcoming difficul- 
ties of an appropriate kind by his own independent 
efforts. The processes of teaching word recognition 
afford excellent opportunities for leading the child 



TEACHING TO EEAD 35 

to recognize and solve constructive problems of un- 
failing interest. 

4. Repetition of process. The repetition that has 
been insisted upon, and is still planned for by many 
excellent teachers, is the frequent presentation of 
the same words in order that they may be readily 
recognized by the pupils. This is the weakest and 
least productive kind of repetition. It depends on 
mere memory cultivation as the means of making 
progress. No method that makes memory the cen- 
tral and direct element in learning can long sustain 
the vital interest of children in any subject. 

The teacher should be guided by principles di- 
rectly opposed to the time-honored method of 
frequent use of the same words in order that the pu- 
pils may learn to recognize them without conscious 
effort. If possible the same word should never be 
seen twice by the pupil while he is gaining the power 
of word recognition. Instead of repeating the same 
words frequently in order that the child may be- 
come familiar with them the teacher should aim to 
present entirely new words to the child, while it is 
learning the process of word recognition. The recog- 
nition of each word should be achieved by the child 
at first by a conscious process of uniting the powers 
and sounds of letters in new combinations. This 
is repetition of processes and not merely recognition 
by memory. This method develops constructive 
power, not memory only, and at the same time it is 
the most effective way of developing a productive 
memory. The pupil should not merely recognize the 
words, he should recognize them as the result of a 
constructive effort. He should independently recog- 
nize new words, that is words that are new to him 
in their visible form. Learning to read is not 



36 TEACHING TO EEAD 

learning to use a new vocabulary ; it is acquiring the 
power to recognize in visible form the vocabulary 
with which the child is familiar in speech. 

The effort at uniting individual powers and sounds 
into combinations to form words must at first be 
made slowly and consciously, and will require the 
full primary attention of the child. It gradually 
becomes rapid and automatic, and this stage is 
reached much sooner than inexperienced teachers 
would expect. Eepetition of process makes the pupil 
an independent solver of interesting problems from 
the beginning, and at each step he gains conscious- 
ness of new power. 

Many teachers who aim to teach word recognition 
by a correct method, make the serious mistake of 
having their pupils repeat and re-repeat the powers 
and sounds of letters as independent powers and 
sounds. They often keep lists of the letters already 
taught on the blackboard for drill purposes in order 
to fix the powers and sounds in the memories of the 
children. This kind of drill in any subject is purely 
mechanical. It deadens interest and even fails to 
fix facts or elements of power in the memory in a 
vital or productive way. There are two ways of de- 
fining truths in the memory. One defines them as 
facts only, the other defines them as elements of 
power for constructive use. 

All mere drill in the facts or tables of any subject 
is comparatively ineffective even for memorizing 
facts or tables, when compared with the method of 
using facts or tables as they become known in the 
accomplishment of definite and interesting purposes 
by the pupils. 

To become familiar with the powers and sounds of 
the letters in the quickest, surest, and most produc- 



TEACHING TO READ 37 

tive way, the child should use them as soon as he 
learns them in recognizing new visible forms of 
words, and especially in making words himself. This 
is a repetition of processes, and not a repetition of 
a mere act of memory. What is learned in this way 
is not merely stored in the memory, it becomes a part 
of the child's life power. 

By persistently using the self-activity of the child 
in discovering and solving problems in word recog- 
nition, the work of investigation, discovery and mas- 
tery in achieving conquests over the difficulties of 
learning to read never loses interest, never becomes 
monotonous, but is always full of the vital interest 
that keeps the child alert, and hopeful, and happy. 



CHAPTER IV 

OBJECTIVE METHODS OF TEACHING WORD RECOGNI- 

TION 

Is there a logical parallel between learning to use 
oral language and learning to recognize visible lan- 
guage? Many teachers claim that there is such a 
parallel. " The logical sequence in learning oral lan- 
guage is : first, the object ; second, the idea ; third, the 
word ; therefore the same order should be followed in 
learning to read written or printed language.'^ This 
has been adopted by many teachers as the philosoph- 
ical basis of their methods of teaching primary 
classes to read^ or more correctly speaking, of teach- 
ing the recognition of visible language. The fol- 
lowing are among the objections that may be urged 
against the acceptance of this as a safe basis for 
the establishment of a logical parallelism between 
the mental operations of a child in acquiring the 
power of oral language, and in learning to recognize 
language in its visible forms: 

1. Oral language is a new language to the 
child, when he is learning to use it. Visible language 
is not a new language. In any of its forms visible 
language is simply a means of representing the oral 
language with which the child is already familiar. 
In learning to read, the child is not acquiring new 
names or terms for either things or ideas. The 
words in written or printed language are identical 

38 



TEACHING TO READ 39 

with the words of spoken language. Oral and vis- 
ible language are not two different languages, but 
one language with two modes of expression or rep- 
resentation, one recognizable through the ear, and 
the other, through the eye. Eeading is the art of 
extracting thought from visible language. He is a 
perfect reader who can acquire thought from visible 
language as rapidly, as definitely, and as compre- 
hensively as from oral language. 

2. The conceptions expressed by oral language 
are new to the child, when he learns the oral language 
with which to express them. The conceptions ex- 
pressed or represented by visible' language are not 
new. They cannot be new. A word representing an 
object or conception with which the child is not 
acquainted suggests no idea to his mind. The ideas 
recalled to the mind of the child by visible language 
must have been in his mind previously, or they could 
not be recalled. The thought and the language must 
have been learned before a pupil can recognize them 
in visible form. The thought and the language 
remain unchanged. In learning to read there is not 
new thought to require a new language, therefore the 
new form of the language cannot be learned as the 
oral form was learned, in direct association with, 
and as the natural psychological result of, the asso- 
ciation of new words with the revelation of new 
thought by new objects and experiences. There can 
be no vital psychological relationship between learn- 
ing to express thought by oral language and learn- 
ing to recognize thought in visible language. 

3. Language lessons should not be confounded 
with reading lessons. Learning to read is not a 
means of extending a child^s vocabulary. Eeading 
will enlarge the child's vocabulary, but the pj:ocess 



40 TEACHING TO READ 

of learning to read cannot do so. He may extend 
his knowledge and his control of language by read- 
ing, but not by learning to read. 

Even those methods of teaching reading that pre- 
sent objects to the child which he has never seen 
before; strange insects, animals or flowers, for in- 
stance, in order to try to be logical in the hopeless 
task of making the process of learning to read analo- 
gous to the process of learning oral language, fail 
to make their method of learning to read the source 
of increased acquaintance with language. The few 
words that may be learned in this cumbersome and 
illogical way are learned not by the reading process 
but by the associated objective process. 

It is impossible to teach reading by using new 
things, and acts, and qualities, and relationships as 
the basis of the language to be read. The child is 
already perfectly familiar with the use of most of 
the language that must be used when it is learning 
to read; and even if an entirely new language could 
be used while learning to read, the plan proposed 
for teaching this new language is the least effective, 
the most unnatural, and most illogical that could 
be adopted. 

The child's vocabulary should be increased by sys- 
tematic language lessons. It will also be necessary 
to explain to him the meaning and use of some of 
the words in his reading lesson. Such explanations 
are in reality not a part of the reading lesson proper. 
New words — words which the child has not been in 
the habit of using orally — should not at first form 
part of the visible language he is learning to recog- 
nize. When he recognizes a new visible form it 
should mean something to him. It should recall an 
idea formerly represented by some oral word. The 



TEACHING TO EEAD 41 

child when learning to read should not be allowed 
to try to read any word in visible language until he 
is familiar with its meaning and use in oral lan- 
guage. But language lessons and reading lessons 
should not be confounded. 

4. Oral language is a natural means of communi- 
cating the child's thought to others; visible language 
in all its forms is artificial. All children who are 
not deaf learn to speak without direct training. 
They not only use articulate language naturally, but 
acquire the names of things and the forms of ex- 
pression used by those with whom they live without 
direct teaching. No thoughtful parent ever gave his 
child a lesson on the names of things, by saying: 
" This is a cup, or a spoon, or a doll, or a chair,'^ 
while pointing to the things named in order that he 
might learn the names of the things he had to use. 
Such absurd teaching has been practised only in 
schools. 

Children use oral language naturally, and learn 
names of things and language forms naturally. They 
learn correct language just as readily as incorrect 
language, if they hear it spoken correctly. Correct 
construction and correct pronunciation are as easily 
learned as incorrect construction and pronunciation. 
If children have definite ideas their language will 
be correspondingly definite. They learn with equal 
facility the oral language used by those with whom 
they associate, English, French, German, etc., as the 
case may be. 

Oral language, being natural, is learned without 
conscious effort. Visible language, being artificial, 
has to be learned by a conscious effort. The process 
of making this conscious effort is not logically re- 



42 TEACHING TO EEAD 

lated to the natural process of acquiring a means 
of expressing thought. 

5. When using oral language thought suggests 
words; in reading, words suggest thought. In oral 
language the idea must precede the word, because 
oral language is a means of expressing thought, and 
a thought cannot be expressed until it has been con- 
ceived. As the clearest conceptions come to children 
from real things, the logical order in learning spoken 
language is naturally object, idea, word. All these 
conditions are reversed in reading and therefore the 
process of learning to read cannot logically be the 
same as the process of learning to talk, or even paral- 
lel with it and in the same direction. 

It is quite true that visible language, like oral 
language, is the expression of thought, but reading 
is the recognition of thought and not the expression 
of thought. This should be a sufficient reason to 
show the impossibility of basing a method of recog- 
nition on a method of expression, especially when in 
one case it is an expression of oral language, which is 
learned unconsciously, and in the other case it is the 
recognition of visible language, which is not a nat- 
ural form of language and which must be recognized 
by conscious effort on the part of the child. In 
reading, the idea is conceived through the word, not 
the word from the idea, so we must begin with the 
word instead of ending with it. Of course we can- 
not get an idea from a word unless we had the idea 
before, and had it in association with the oral word 
to which the visible word we are reading corresponds. 
Words do not create ideas in the minds of children 
learning to read; they recall ideas already in their 
minds, and the process of reading consists in look- 
ing at words and recognizing through them the 



TEACHING TO EEAD 43 

mental pictures they represent. It is true that the 
child when older should get many revelations of new 
facts and new ideals from visible language by read- 
ing, but reading should not be confounded with 
learning to read. Even when reading, however, the 
reader must understand the meaning of the author's 
words before he can understand the author's ideals. 
Words in reading should recall conceptions already 
in the mind. The process of reading intelligently 
consists in looking at words and recognizing through 
them the mental pictures they represent. This is 
true of words, of sentences, of chapters, and of books. 
The only possible order in reading is from the word 
or sentence to the thought, and any process that re- 
verses this essential order retards the progress of 
the child in learning to read. 

The teachers should most carefully avoid the pos- 
sibility of suggesting the word by the thing or the 
conception the word represents, while the pupil is 
learning to recognize visible language. To do so 
will interfere with the essential and logical process 
by which the child should be acquiring power to 
translate visible language into oral language and 
ultimately to be able to extract thought automat- 
ically from visible language as well as from oral 
language. 

6. The child has to deal solely with words, not 
objects, in reading, when he is able to read, and 
therefore our aim should be to give him the mastery 
over the recognition of words as early as possible. 
A child can read well, when he is able to extract 
thought automatically and rapidly from printed or 
written matter. The teacher's first aim should be 
to make word recognition automatic. When this is 
accomplished the child is able to give his full mental 



44 TEACHING TO READ 

power to the recognition of thought. So long as 
any part of his attention has to be given to the 
recognition of words, he cannot give his whole mind 
to the recognition of thought. 

C^jie power to recognize words automatically should 
be developed, as all power must be developed, by 
repetition of the necessary processes, slowly and con- 
sciously at first, but with increasing rapidity until 
it becomes free and automatic. An object should 
never be used to suggest the name of a visible word. 
Eeading is not a means of obtaining thought from 
objects. Eeading is not the recognition of words 
suggested by objects or by any other way of produc- 
ing thought. Eeading is a process of recognizing 
words through their own forms and construction. 
The recognition is the first and not the last step in 
reading; and to make it the last step instead of the 
first step reverses the essentially logical order of 
development. The use of the object to suggest the 
recognition of the visible word directly interferes 
with the development of the power that is absolutely 
necessary in the recognition of words independently. 
It retards both the immediate and the ultimate prog- 
ress of the child. Object lessons are very useful 
when properly taught, but they cannot be made read- 
ing lessons. Eeading cannot be confined to object 
lessons, or to recognizing words suggested by ob- 
jects. The chief aim of the object lesson is to give 
power to gain new knowledge from things. The aim 
of the reading lesson is to give power to extract 
thought from visible language. 

7. The strongest argument in favor of the use 
of objects in connection with the reading lesson is 
based on the absolute necessity for a direct and 
strong bond of association between the idea and the 



TEACHING TO READ 45 

word which represents it. The importance of this 
association cannot be too strongly emphasized. The 
misapplication of this correct principle will be evi- 
dent, however, if we remember that in learning to 
read the child is not learning a new language, but 
merely gaining power to recognize in a new form the 
language he already uses freely. The essential asso- 
ciation between words and their corresponding ideas 
becomes definite, when the child is learning to speak, 
and the only step left for the teacher to take is to 
make the association rapid and definite between the 
spoken word and the printed or written word which 
is the visible representation of the spoken word which 
the child already understands and uses. The child 
cannot read intelligently, either silently or aloud, 
language which he does not speak intelligently. He 
should not be allowed to try to do so. The child's 
spoken language corresponds with his ideas, and 
when he hears it used it recalls these ideas to his 
mind. He should not try to have two ways of 
recognizing an idea through language till its recog- 
nition is accurate and automatic in one way. The 
oral way of expressing and recognizing ideas is the 
natural way and should precede the visible method. 

The child begins the process of learning to read 
with a very large number of conceptions which are 
represented by him and to him in his spoken lan- 
guage by corresponding words. Each conception in- 
stantly suggests its appropriate word when he is 
speaking; each spoken word suggests its correspond- 
ing idea when some one else is speaking to him. 
The conception recalls the object because it is the 
mental picture of the object. The following is a 
logical sequence: 



46 TEACHING TO READ 

1st. The object — hat. 

2nd. The idea — hat. 

3rd. The spoken word — ^hat. 

4th. The visible word — hat. 

The child is thoroughly acquainted with the first 
three steps in this sequence before he begins to learn 
to read. Logically the first two steps are one so far 
as reading is concerned. Any one of the first three 
steps instantly recalls the other two to the child 
without any conscious effort on his part. If we try 
to take the fourth step before the first three are 
definitely associated with one another, our course is 
illogical. 

The only question to be decided by the teacher 
is, with which of the first three steps can the fourth 
— the visible word — be most easily, most naturally, 
and most philosophically associated? The answer 
to this question will be definitely settled as soon as 
we decide to which of the other three steps the vis- 
ible word is most perfectly related. We can have no 
difficulty in reaching a decision. There can be no di- 
rect relationship between the shape of a hat and 
the visible word "hat,^^ nor between our mental 
picture of a hat and the visible word " hat.^^ No re- 
lationship whatever exists, or was intended to exist 
by those who planned our visible language. Our 
language is not a system of hieroglyphics. Every 
means used to make our language visible in any 
form, is based on the philosophical plan of the repre- 
sentation of the individual sounds of spoken language 
by corresponding visible signs. The founders of our 
system of visible language knew that there are only 
a few sounds in our spoken language, and only a 
few methods for combining and uttering them, so 
they wisely decided to design a series of letters to 



TEACHING TO READ 47 

represent in visible form the sounds of oral language 
and the formations of the organs of speech used in 
uttering these sounds. It was with this manifest 
and definite purpose that alphabets were constructed. 

Visible language is therefore directly and phil- 
osophically related to spoken language, and as soon 
as the relationships between their corresponding ele- 
ments have been definitely established in the child^s 
mind, the one form of language becomes convert- 
ible into the other by a regular and logical process, 
that is performed slowly and by conscious eifort at 
first but which soon becomes automatic. On the 
other hand the association of the visible word with 
the object or idea directly is necessarily an arbitrary 
process and must inevitably remain an arbitrary pro- 
cess with no logical basis whatever. A great many 
ingenious plans have been adopted to simplify this 
arbitrary process, and to try to make it conform to 
natural laws, but however beautifully it may be 
clothed or padded, its natural deformity cannot be 
concealed. It must remain an arbitrary process to 
the end. 

The case, therefore, stands clearly thus: the first 
three steps in the sequence are indissolubly bound 
together in the child^s mind before he goes to school, 
or begins to learn to read. The first two, the ob- 
ject and the idea, are really one so far as reading 
is concerned. These two on one hand, and the spoken 
word on the other hand, are automatically inter- 
suggestive. Our problem in reading is to make the 
very same word in another form recall or suggest 
the very same idea that has regularly been brought 
to the child^s mind by the spoken word. This must 
be done by giving the child the power to make the 
visible word suggest the oral word which always nat- 



48 TEACHING TO BEAD 

"urally recalls the corresponding idea or object; and 
all attempts to associate the visible word with the 
object or idea by direct process are necessarily il- 
logical an3 interfere with the essential and logical 
association of the visible forms of speech with the 
oral forms which they were intended to represent. 

Questions in regard to the alphabet and improve- 
ments that might have been made or may yet be 
made in its construction have no real bearing on the 
logical method of training a child to recognize vis- 
ible language. Whether the difficulties arising from 
an imperfect alphabet be few or many, the child's 
problem remains logically unaltered and unalter- 
able. He can read when he has in some way learned 
to translate the visible forms of language into their 
corresponding forms in spoken language, and to 
recognize the combinations of visible forms as repre- 
senting the union of sounds to form the words used 
in oral language. 

If there were not overwhelming reasons to show 
that all objective methods of teaching pupils to read 
are illogical, there is an insurmountable practical 
difficulty that makes it impossible to carry out the 
method beyond a very limited range of words. Only 
a few objects can possibly be directly associated with 
visible words in the schoolroom, but all objects and 
ideas must be represented in visible language. 

8. Expression of thought and recognition of 
forms of thought have been confounded by those who 
advocate the same process of learning to speak and 
learning to read. They are not similar processes 
psychologically. In the expression of thought the 
thing and its name are mutually intersuggestive in 
both spoken and written language. This is not the 
case in the recognition of visible language. In recog- 



TEACHING TO READ 49 

nition the name recalls the object much more cer- 
tainly than the object suggests its name. We look at 
thousands of objects every day, and even use them, 
without being conscious of the fact that they have 
names at all. Objects were not made for names, 
names were made for objects. 

These considerations show that it is unphilosophical 
to use the object as a means of suggesting the name 
of a word, so as to aid in recognizing it. The name 
should be recognized independently, and in the 
practice of reading it must be recognized inde- 
pendently. It is the duty of the teacher to see that 
the words recognized recall corresponding ideas in 
the child^s mind, but the first association of ideas 
with words should not be made through visible 
language, and therefore this part of the teacher's 
work is not connected directly with the process of 
learning to read. 

9. But it is claimed that the association of the 
spoken word with the idea was arbitrary and yet it 
was accomplished in a natural and definite way, and 
that it therefore follows that the visible word should 
be directly associated with the idea through the ob- 
ject in a similar manner. This really means that the 
names of objects can be associated with the objects 
through the eye as naturally and as readily as 
through the ear. This is clearly an illogical assump- 
tion for several reasons. First, spoken language is 
natural and visible language is not natural. The 
eye has in a sense a language of its own, but this 
language is limited in its range and application. 
It is manifestly absurd to assume that a race 
gifted with the power of hearing and with the won- 
derful power of speech could learn the names of ob- 
jects as readily through the eye as through the ear. 



50 TEACHING TO EEAD 

Spoken language is learned incidentally without 
direct effort of any kind on the part either of the 
child or its parents. The child learns the language 
of its parents and speaks it as accurately as they do, 
without any attempt at teaching by the parents or 
study by the child. The ear is the natural organ 
through which language power is acquired and de- 
veloped. Second, it is impossible to have the visible 
names of all things attached to or directly associated 
with them. Third, if every object had its name writ- 
ten or printed on it, the idioms of language would 
still be lacking. Fourth, in order to communicate 
through the eye by language every individual would 
have to carry with him a complete set of words or the 
means of making them. 

10. The ablest advocates of the object-word 
method do not really accept it themselves in practice, 
except for a short period and within a very limited 
range of words. This is the most peculiar fact in 
connection with the whole range of the literature 
written about methods of learning to read. Men 
write elaborate theories to prove that the whole word 
method is the proper one, and having established 
what they regard as a philosophical basis for their 
method, they immediately repudiate it by limiting 
its application to a comparatively insignificant num- 
ber of words. Some use their method for only about 
sixty words. Very few now suggest its use for more 
than two hundred words. But even if it were 
philosophical in its application to a small number of 
words, as its advocates claim, its pedagogical value 
would be too insignificant to make it a worthy foun- 
dation for a method of training a child to read. 

The sum of the whole matter is this: — oral lan- 
guage is the expression of thought, reading is the 



TEACHING TO READ 61 

recognition of thought expressed in visible form. 
When the child is using oral language his thought 
suggests his language^ when he is reading, the lan- 
guage suggests the thought. When the child begins 
to learn to read, he has already learned his language. 
Reading is not a method of learning a new language, 
but of recognizing the child's own language in a new 
form, and therefore it follows that an analogy be- 
tween the process of learning to speak and learning 
to read cannot be logically sustained. 



CHAPTER V 

THE PHONIC METHOD 

To become capable of reading independently the 
child must in some way gain a mastery of the powers 
and sounds of the letters, and of the laws by which 
they are combined to form the words of our lan- 
guage. He must know that some letters always say 
the same thing, and that others do not always say the 
same thing; that some letters always speak in the 
words in which they occur, and that others sometimes 
speak and are sometimes silent. He must in short 
acquire in some way the power to translate the visible 
forms of language into oral language, and recognize 
visible words as representing the ideas already repre- 
sented in his mind by spoken words, so that in time 
by practice and experience he may be able to extract 
thought from visible language definitely, compre- 
hensively, and rapidly. Perfect reading power will 
be acquired when the race can get thought as fully 
and as definitely from printed language as from 
oral language. In order to do this the child must 
acquire the power of automatic word recognition 
through ability to combine the sounds and powers of 
letters into words. This necessarily requires that the 
child must know, consciously or unconsciously, what 
the powers and sounds of the letters are, or what the 
letters say. 

It matters not how the child has been taught word 

53 



TEACHING TO READ 53 

recognition^ by the alphabetic, the phonic, the pho- 
netic, the word or the sentence method, or by any 
combinations or extensions of these methods, when he 
has learned to recognize new words independently he 
has in some way gained the power of automatically 
associating the letter forms with the various positions 
of the vocal organs in producing oral language. When 
a word begins with b, p, or m, he must automatically 
shut his lips instantly in order to begin to read it ; if 
it begins with s, he must begin instantly to force air 
over his lifted tongue and past his upper teeth so as 
form a hissing sound ; if it begins with t, d, or n, he 
must intantly place the point of his tongue against 
the roof of his mouth near his upper teeth ; and so on 
with all the other letters. As soon as he sees them, 
his organic formation of lips, tongue and teeth, 
changes to correspond with the powers, or sounds, 
they represent. This must be done by whatever 
system he has learned word recognition. If w^e see a 
word which we have never seen before we construct it 
just as readily as if we w^ere familiar with it. If, for 
instance we met with the word ^^ plobf antsdem,'' (a 
word form made for the illustration) we instantly 
perform a successive series of rapid organic forma- 
tions and make certain sounds so that the whole 
unites to form what we call a word. These forma- 
tions of the vocal organs and these sounds made by 
the vocal chords must follow in definite order, or the 
word will not be correctly formed and sounded. In 
speaking this word we make eleven changes in or- 
ganic construction — lips closed, tongue against roof 
of mouth, mouth open, lips closed, upper teeth on 
lower lip, mouth open, tongue against roof of mouth 
near teeth, tongue near the roof of mouth, tongue 
against roof of mouth near teeth, mouth open, lips 



64 TEACHING TO EEAD 

closed. There are only eleven formations for twelve 
letters because " n '^ and " t ^^ come together and 
they require the same organic construction. The 
tongue, throat and lips modify the open mouth so as 
to form different sounds for " a/^ " e/^ and " o." The 
word begins and ends with the lips closed, but in the 
one case no sound is made, while in the other case a 
sound is made which is allowed to pass out through 
the nose. The letter " b ^' orders the lips to be closed 
as in the case of ^'p'^ and ^'m.'' Like " m,'' "h'' 
makes a sound, but the sound of ^^ b ^^ is not allowed 
to pass out. The letters " d/^ " n/^ and '' t/^ require 
the same organic construction; "t^' asks no sound; 
^^ n ^^ and ^^ d '^ demand that a sound be made. In 
the case of ^^ n ^^ the sound is allowed to pass through 
the nose ; in the case of ^^ d '' the sound is not allowed 
to pass out at all. In the case of ^H/^ a sound es- 
capes between the tongue and the roof of the mouth; 
^' f '^ and ^^ s " order breath alone to escape, — in the 
first case, between the teeth and the lower lip, and 
in the second case, between the tongue and the roof 
of the mouth and past the ends of the upper teeth. 

Every one, by whatever method he learned word 
recognition, obeys the instructions or signals given 
by the letters in this word, if he can read. The 
letters in the alphabet are really a set of shorthand 
symbols representing a corresponding set of sen- 
tences. The symbol ^^m^^ says, ^^shut your lips, 
make a sound, and allow it to pass through your 
nose.^' The symbol ^' v ^' says, '' put your upper teeth 
on your lower lip, make a sound, and let it escape 
through your mouth.^^ The symbol ^' s ^^ says, ^' put 
your tongue near the roof of your mouth and force 
a stream of breath, without voice, over the tongue and 
past the ends of the upper teeth.'^ The symbol " f ^* 



TEACHING TO EEAD 55 

gives the same order as ^W/^ but it asks for breath 
only, instead of voice ; and the symbol " z ^^ gives ex- 
actly the same order as " s ^^ only it requires voice, 
instead of breath, to be sent over the tongue and past 
the teeth, and so on through the alphabet. Learning 
to recognize words — what is commonly called " learn- 
ing to read ^^ — really means learning to interpret the 
meaning of the letter signals and to combine the 
formative results rapidly, and ultimately auto- 
matically. 

No one pretends that the recognition of all the 
words in our reading must depend on memory of all 
the word forms. Whatever method of recognizing 
words has been used, the reader must have gained 
automatic control of the powers and sounds of the 
letters and their various modifications in combina- 
tion. Every letter in '^ plobf antsdem ^^ must be 
sounded or formed in regular order, or the word is 
not correctly spoken. The letters are simply short- 
hand methods of giving instructions for organic 
construction, for making and modifying sounds, and 
for issuing these sounds, or breath alone, through the 
prepared mouth or nose, when the organic construc- 
tions are made. 

The best method of teaching word recognition is 
the one which most easily, most quickly, and most 
thoroughly makes the child acquainted with the 
sounds and powers of the letters and trains him to 
combine them into word sounds, if at the same time 
it fulfils the fundamentally essential conditions of 
the self-activity of the child, problem finding and 
problem solving by the child, the preservation and 
development of the child^s interest, and repetition of 
the processes by which words are recognized, and 
not repetition of mere word forms to be mem- 



56 TEACHING TO READ 

orized as word forms. The child will learn to 
recognize words by any method that may be adopted, 
but some method must fulfil the conditions speci- 
fied more perfectly than the others. The method 
that most completely realizes these conditions must 
be the best method to use. The chief purpose of this 
book is to prove that the phonic method, in harmony 
with true pedagogic principles, is the best method of 
enabling the child to recognize words definitely and 
rapidly. 

Little need be said to prove that the alphabetic, or 
letter-naming, method is not a good method. While 
it in a sense co-ordinates reading with spelling it is 
an ineffective method of teaching both subjects; and 
as a means of teaching reading it is absolutely with- 
out any logical basis, as in nearly all the words of the 
language there is no relationship whatever between 
the sounds of the words and the names of the letters 
of which they are composed. 

All the methods that lead the child to recognize 
the powers and sounds of letters through the use of 
words in association with objects; or by writing on 
the board words or short sentences used by the chil- 
dren about objects, or experiences, or myths, or 
stories, or nursery rhymes or anything else, however 
interesting the subjects may be; or by giving the 
children, either in books, or in writing on the black- 
board, familiar nursery rhymes or similar selections 
to read which have first been accurately memorized, 
and which are to be repeated as they look at the 
words which represent in visible form the words they 
already use freely orally; in short all the methods 
that reveal letter powers and sounds by analytic pro- 
cesses are unnecessarily slow, and they fail in the 
most essential requirements of high educational value 



TEACHING TO EEAD 57 

in the general development of the child's powers. 
They do not make him self-active; they do not give 
opportunities either for finding, or solving, problems, 
and they depend on memory and not on operative 
processes for the development of the child's power. 
These are sufficiently vital reasons for rejecting a 
method of teaching any subject, or developing any 
power. Even if such a method were the quickest 
method of learning a subject or of acquiring a power, 
it should not be practised. But the teacher never 
has to choose between the most rapid method and the 
most truly pedagogical method. The method that is 
based on the truest pedagogy is certain to secure the 
most rapid learning and the most thorough and the 
most vital development in any subject. 

There is another fundamental objection to all 
analytic methods of learning word recognition. 
While a limited number of words may be learned as 
whole words, the pupil, as soon as he begins to read 
independently, must recognize all new words by a 
constructively synthetic process. No one pretends 
that all words can be, or ought to be, memorized by 
the pupils. The great body of words in any language 
must be recognized independently by the child. The 
advocates of analytic, or whole-word, methods of any 
kind really claim that analytic methods of learning 
word recognition are the best methods of developing 
independent power of synthetic recognition, which 
is the only possible process by which we can recognize 
new words. 

When all must learn, in some way, the powers and 
sounds of letters, in order to read independently, and 
recognize words whose names they have not memo- 
rized, it should not require much argument to prove 
that the method which aims to give the child a defi- 



58 TEACHI?fG TO EEAD 

nite and ready acquaintance with these sounds and 
powers must be the best^ if it conforms with the 
fundamental laws of true pedagogy, and is therefore 
adapted to the stage of the child's development. The 
phonic method is the only method that fulfils these 
conditions completely. Of course the phonetic 
method would fulfil these conditions also, if our lan- 
guage had a strictly phonetic alphabet. It is usual 
to object to the phonic method because the English 
alphabet is not a phonetic alphabet. This is not 
a valid objection, however, because it is possible even 
with our imperfect alphabet to use a perfectly self- 
consistent language in which the pupils will be given 
only one sound for each letter, while they are learn- 
ing all the processes of word recognition. There are 
enough words in the child's vocabulary in which the 
vowels have but one sound and the variant con- 
sonants but one power, to give all the variety neces- 
sary in the words to be constructed or recognized by 
the child, while he is learning the process of word 
recognition. ; i\Tien the child has acquired the pro- 
cess of word' recognition with a self-consistent 
alphabet, his teacher has only to reveal to him the 
fact that certain letters do not always say the same 
thing, and to teach him their variations and a few 
principles underlying these variations, in order to 
qualify him to read his own oral vocabulary in its 
completeness. It is not necessary to use diacritical 
marks or variations of form of the letters to enable 
the child to sound the words correctly. A few fun- 
damental laws of variation will guide him to the 
common irregularities that may be accounted for in 
a systematic way, and the law of association with 
the context will enable him to overcome the other 
irregularities. In reading the sentence, " The cat 



TEACHING TO EEAD 59 

sat on the table/^ for instance, even before the child 
has learned that ^' a ^' does not aJways say the same 
thing, no reasonably bright child would give the 
same sound to " a '' in '' cat '' and " table/' The ad- 
justing power of the child through association of 
ideas is practically unlimited, when the words he has 
to read are words of his own regular vocabulary used 
in simple sentences; and no reasonable teacher ever 
uses words that are not common to a child's vocabu- 
lary, when the child is learning to read. 

Lack of faith in the adjusting and relating power 
of the child has led most advocates of the phonic 
m.ethod to construct various devices of a more or less 
intricate and confusing character to represent all the 
sounds and consonantal variations of our language. 
Such devices interfere with the child's progress, and 
some of them are so manifestly ridiculous that they 
have prejudiced thoughtful teachers against the 
phonic method. The only markings that should ever 
be used are the mark for the long vowels, and a stroke 
through a letter to show that it does not speak. 
These may be used with advantage for a short time, 
but only for a short time, when the pupil is receiving 
lessons from the blackboard. 

The phonic method of teaching word recognition 
should not be confounded with phonic practice for 
correct pronunciation. Some advocates of the phonic 
method of teaching word recognition claim as one of 
the advantages of the method that it corrects provin- 
cialism by leading the children to give the strictly 
correct letter sounds in all words. This is claiming 
too much. It is quite true that learning word recog- 
nition by the phonic method gives a logical prepar- 
ation for the practices which must be used later in 
correcting provincialisms in pronunciation caused by 



60 TEACHING TO READ 

giving wrong sounds to certain letters; but word 
recognition by the phonic method or by any other 
method will not cause the pupils to change their 
way of pronouncing words. Word recognition and 
phonic practice for pronunciation are distinct 
processes, so distinct, that for practical purposes, they 
are not directly related. Word recognition by the 
phonic method makes little, if any, change in the way 
the children pronounce their words. If two children 
have been accustomed to pronounce /^blue,*"' or 
^' aunt,^' or ^^ f ast,^^ or " calm ^^ in two different ways 
they will continue to pronounce them in two different 
ways when they meet them in their reading lessons 
even though they have been taught word recognition 
by the phonic method. The power of recognition will 
not overcome habit, neither will the process by which 
the power of recognition is acquired. Word recogni- 
tion simply gives a child the power to recognize, in 
visible form, the language he has been accustomed to 
use orally; and, if Tom has been accustomed to say 
^' barl,^'^ and Jim to say " bar-rel,^^ each of them will 
recognize in visible form the word he has been 
accustomed to use, and will read it accordingly till 
Tom is trained to do otherwise by specific practice 
in correct pronunciation. The child, in learning to 
read, uses the knowledge given him regarding the 
powers and sounds of the letters to enable him to 
construct or to recognize words, and not as a guide in 
pronouncing them. It is probable that in making 
the word '' barrel ^^ Tom would write '^ barl ^^ because 
that represents his conception and his use of the 
word; and when corrected he would learn that he has 
been in the habit of mispronouncing the word. In 
a similar way, a London boy might learn that he has 
been mispronouncing words beginning with ^^v/^ or 



TEACHING TO EEAD 61 

that he has been misusing the letter "h.'' So far 
as any system aids in removing peculiarities of speech 
the phonic system may reasonably claim the advant- 
age, especially, when the peculiarity depends on the 
misuse of consonants ; but it is too much to claim for 
any method of teaching word recognition that it 
removes provincialisms in mispronunciation. 

It has been stated that the phonic method inter- 
feres with the teaching of spelling. Compared with 
any whole word system the phonic method has the 
advantage on general principles. Spelling necessarily 
depends on accurate and definite power to see all the 
letters in a word and to see them in their properly 
related order. No whole word system can train the 
pupil to do this so thoroughly as a synthetic or con- 
structive system must do it. The phonic system 
taught, as it should be taught, chiefly hy ear proilems, 
trains the pupil to be able to spell all regular words 
without any special lessons in spelling, and leaves only 
the spelling of the irregular words to be learned. 
Even in learning these, the pupil who has been 
trained to look definitely at each element in the 
word in order to recognize it must have the advantage. 
The efforts of the advocates of spelling reform, so 
far as they have been, or may yet be, successful, will 
give the pupil trained to recognize words by the 
phonic method more and more advantage in the de- 
partment of spelling over those trained by any other 
method. 

It is sometimes urged that the sounds of the letters 
are new to the child, and this is given as a reason for 
not using the phonic system. Novelty cannot be 
successfully used as an argument against the use of 
any method by a child. The child is interested in 
two classes of things : those with which he is familiar, 



62 TEACHI5JG TO READ 

and those which are new to him ; and his interest in 
both depends on their adaptation to liis stage of 
development and the uses to which he can put them. 
Novelty of an appropriate kind always adds to a 
cliild's interest in a subject, or in the tools he must 
use in acquiring power. 

" But the power and sounds of letters are unre- 
lated abstractions to a child, and therefore the phonic 
method cannot be the right one for him. He should 
deal with real things, or with words that represent 
real things to him.^^ 

In a sense the powers and sounds of the letters are 
abstractions to the child, and this is one of many 
valid reasons for not teaching children to read when 
they are too young. It would be much better for 
their health and happiness as well as for their rapid 
and intelligent progress in reading, if they did not 
begin to learn to read till they were nine years old, 
or even older. They should hear a great deal of 
good literature appropriate to their stage of develop- 
ment before they are nine years of age. The most 
appropriate use of oral reading is when mother or 
father or teacher reads aloud to the children, and one 
of the errors of adulthood in the past has been to 
limit the kind of literature deemed suitable for chil- 
dren to stories or poems that may properly be called 
childish. Children of seven, eight, or nine, years of 
age are capable of enjoying and appreciating litera- 
ture of a higher class than is usually read to them. 
But the time for the children to dig for themselves 
the treasures of literature should be delayed longer 
than it usually is. The child's life should be so full 
of play in its varied phases, of constructive experi- 
ments with the material things of his environment 
that he may become conscious of his own powers and 



TEACHING TO READ 63 

his capacity for transforming material things in 
harmony with his own plans, and of the joy of ever 
deepening and ever widening acquaintance with the 
mysteriously attractive processes of Nature, that he 
will not have any time left for reading till he is nine 
years of age. 

But the letters and their sounds and powers should 
not remain abstractions to the child, and certainly 
they cannot continue to be unrelated. The letters 
should always be spoken of, to the children, as if they 
had personality. They should be represented as say- 
ing something, as speaking alone, as singing duets 
w^ith other letters, or as keeping silence to listen to 
their other little comrades in the words, when they 
are not expected to speak themselves. This simple 
practice invests the letters with a real personal 
power, and arouses a vital interest in them on the 
part of the children. It adds to the interest, and 
aids in a natural classification of the letters to speak 
regularly to the children of the vowels as '' girls,^^ 
and of the consonants as ^^boys.^"^ The words 
^' vowels '^ and " consonants ^' should of course not 
be used, but to have both ^' girl ^^ letters and " boy *' 
letters makes the personation more complete and more 
real, and prepares the way, lays the apperceptive 
basis, for a logical classification of the letters later. 
It adds greatly to the interest of the child in any 
subject to attribute personal power to inanimate 
things. The child's imagination continually associates 
the idea of life with inanimate things. A piece of 
stick readily becomes a mamma who tells endless 
stories to her stick children. A collection of sticks, 
or pins, or buttons, or even of marks in a row, will 
form an army of the bravest soldiers. The child's 
imagination vitalizes everything it touches with life. 



64 TEACHING TO READ 

The child creates his own environment, and sphere, 
and experiences, if he has favorable conditions, 
and if his child life is understood and reverenced by 
the adults with whom he lives. Too often the real 
child life is dwarfed by the interference of meddlesome 
adulthood. It will seem perfectly natural to the child 
to say to him '^ a '^ says, ^' b '' says, ^^ m ^^ says, etc., 
and your statements will be strictly true. 

" But as some of the letters do not always say the 
same thing it will confuse the child's mind to have 
to teach him this fact.'' It is a fact that some letters 
do not always say the same thing. The child must 
learn this when he learns to read, by whatever system 
he learns word recognition. It does not confuse him, 
or mystify him, or prevent the development of his 
reasoning power to find out that some letters can say 
more than one thing. He does not always say the 
same thing himself. Some of his friends can speak 
in two or more different languages. The letters that 
speak more than one language may be spoken 
of as better educated than the others and their 
peculiarity is at once accounted for to the child, 
if indeed their special power requires to be accounted 
for. The child's own way of accounting for things 
is usually entirely satisfactory to himself, and is gen- 
erally the best way for him. We should account for 
things to him only when he asks for explanations of 
his mysteries. His mysteries are, generally, not 
those that suggest themselves to adult minds, and 
when he does ask for explanations, our explanations 
should be those that will satisfy the child mind, not 
necessarily those that would satisfy the adult mind. 

^^ The children lose the opportunity for language 
development in connection with the reading lessons 
if they are taught by the phonic method.'^ Oh, no I 



TEACHING TO READ 65 

The children are led to talk a great deal even while 
they are learning the powers and sounds of the letters 
and how to use them; and the phonic method much 
more quickly than any other method requires the 
writing of the pupiFs own language in original work. 
No other method makes the independent construc- 
tion of words and sentences such an essential part 
of the process of word recognition as the phonic 
method does, when properly used. 

The reasons for using the phonic method are both 
educational and practical. They may be briefly 
stated as follows : 

1. The child must possess phonic recognition 
power before he becomes independent in recognizing 
new words. Independent recognition power should 
be the aim of the teacher. We recognize new words 
through life by the phonic method only. Therefore 
the process that leads to independent automatic rec- 
ognition power most quickly, and most definitely, is 
the best, provided that it at the same time affords 
the best opportunities for the development of the 
pupil's intellectual and moral powers. 

2. The phonic method makes the pupil self-active 
from the first day. The teacher, of course, gives him 
the names and powers of the letters as he needs them, 
and as soon as he is acquainted with two of them he 
immediately begins to use them in making words. 
He is guided at first by his teacher in the perform- 
ance of the simple steps necessary in the solution of 
his problems. It takes but a few days for him to 
become acquainted with the sounds and powers of the 
letters, and he uses each one as he learns it in con- 
nection with those already learned. From the first 
he is engaged in the solution of a progressive 
sequence of problems as definitely related as the 



66 TEACHING TO READ 

problems in arithmetic^ or algebra, or any other 
science. He has two kinds of problems only to solve : 
ear problems and eye problems. In the ear problem 
the word is sonnded for him to write; in the eye 
problem the word is written or printed for him to 
sound. The process of solution is the same for all 
ear problems; the process of solution in all eye 
problems is also the same. The child has to learD 
only two processes: the process of solving ear 
problems, and the process of solving eye problems. 
He performs both processes the first day. He per- 
forms them slowly, at first, and with conscious effort. 
His processes will be the same in the end, but he will 
then be able to perform them very rapidly and very 
definitely without conscious effort, and without 
giving his primary attention to them. The presen- 
tation of his new tools — the additional letter sounds 
and powers — is made gradually and as he is ready 
for them, and takes so little time that it scarcely 
needs to be taken into consideration. The great 
work to be achieved is the solution of ear problems 
and eye problems so frequently and in such varied 
forms that the child becomes capable, as soon as pos- 
sible, of solving them rapidly and accurately, while 
giving his primary attention not to the word itself, 
nor to the sentence itself, but to the meaning of the 
word or the sentence. 

During the whole of this progressive development 
the child is self-active and independent in his opera- 
tive work. The teacher supplies him with the tools 
and tests his power to solve increasingly dnHcult 
problems. These increase in difficulty not because 
the process changes, but because the number of pos- 
sible elements in the problem increases, as new 
letter sounds and powers are taught. The important 



TEACHING TO EEAD 67 

thing to remember is that the child is from the first 
day developing independent intellectual power which 
under proper guidance qualifies him for more rapid 
and more definite progress in his other departments 
of study, and for greater success in life. 

The independent achievement of success in the 
solution of problems has a very important influence 
on the character of a child, by making him conscious 
of individual power, and laying the foundation for a 
vital faith in himself. 

3. The child^s work in learning word recognition 
by the phonic method is not the repetition of memory 
processes, but the repetition of operative processes 
of a constructive character. This is one of the most 
essential distinctions between the old and the new 
education in teaching all subjects. The child is not 
expected to memorize word forms, he is expected to 
recognize words by combining the sounds and powers 
of the letters of which they are composed. Memo- 
rizing words, or recognizing them because they are 
familiar or have been already taught is one of the 
things to be most carefully guarded against by the 
teacher. If possible the child should not see the 
same word twice when he is learning word recogni- 
tion. He may of course use the same words in writ- 
ing his own thought as often as he chooses without 
danger. Eapid recognition of words should not 
depend on the frequency with which the words are 
seen, but on increasing power to solve problems in 
word recognition. When a child repeats an opera- 
tive process he has developed more power; when he 
recognizes a word which he has seen before and 
whose sound he has learned, he merely develops 
memory. By repetition of process he is acquiring 
ability to recognize and use his entire language; by 



68 TEACHING TO EEAD 

repetition of a word he is merely making more cer- 
tain the recognition and use of one word, and pos- 
sibly aiding in the recognition of a few others of 
which it forms a part. 

4. The phonic method preserves and develops the 
child's interest. Children soon lose interest in things 
other people talk abont. They lose interest in things 
other people do to instruct or even to amuse them. 
They lose interest in things other people show them. 
They lose interest, after a time, even in doing things 
themselves, when their work is planned by others — 
even by the wisest and the most attractive teacher 
in the world. But their interest increases in work of 
any kind appropriate to their stage of development 
and in which they are themselves allowed a fair share 
of the planning. The phonic method to a much 
greater degree than any other method of teaching 
word recognition provides the conditions of vital and 
sustained interest, because the child in learning by 
this method is more independent, more operative, 
and more self-active than in learning by any other 
method. 

5. Letters are marks, and marks interest children 
only so far as they represent life, or can be used in 
some representative process. Children are interested 
in what things say, not in what they are named. 
Young children name cows, pigs, cats, dogs, etc., by 
what these animals say. They are not interested in 
them on account of their names, but on account of 
what they say, and they speak of them at first by 
imitating what they say. In the phonic method each 
letter is represented as saying something, and the 
children are at first required to personate the letters 
and to speak what the letter says. This adapts the 



TEACHING TO HEAD 69 

method to the child^s nature, and increases his in- 
terest in the work of learning to read. 

6. Knowledge is used as soon as it is obtained by 
the phonic method. The child spends no time in 
learning the alphabet before he begins to use it. He 
combines two letters as soon as he knows what they 
say. When he is introduced to another letter and 
knows what it says he can make and recognize more 
words. Each new letter increases his material for 
use, and he uses it at once in connection with what 
he has been using. The old methods of teaching not 
only reading but other subjects did a good deal of 
storing of the memory with tables and facts to be 
used, when the child was older. Power is always lost 
when the memory is loaded with knowledge beyond 
the child's power to use it. 

7. The child fixes the sounds and powers of the 
letters in his memory by using them and not by drill. 
This is in harmony with one of the fundamental 
laws of the new education. Memorizing by drill or 
mere repetition of words or facts is the least effective 
way of committing to memory and the weakest 
method of developing general memory power. Some 
teachers of the phonic method drill regularly on lists 
of letters whose sounds and powers have been learned. 
This is a most uninteresting and most ineffective 
exercise. The children cannot be interested in it, 
and it is certain to lead them into wrong methods of 
giving the sounds and powers of the letters, especially 
of the consonants. Such practice does little to train 
the children to perform the operations necessary 
either in forming or in recognizing words. It is only 
by using the letter sounds and powers that they be- 
come fixed in the child's mind as available instru- 
ments in reading and writing. Too many things are 



70 TEACHING TO READ 

still stored in the memories of children by various 
processes of word or fact repetitions. Most of the 
things so stored in the memory remain in the 
memory and never get into the real executive intel- 
lectual life and power of the child as vital elements. 

8. The phonic method requires the use of what 
has already been acquired in order to make a proper 
use of the new letter that is being taught. This is 
the only perfect way to review the work that has been 
taught in any subject. To review merely for the 
purpose of deepening the impression, or for the sake 
of the facts or the language is not good teaching. 
The highest kind of reviewing is done, when in 
taking a step in advance we require the use in some 
constructive work of what has already been learned. 
This should be done in teaching by the phonic 
method, and can be done only with the phonic or 
phonetic method. 

9. The phonic method and the phonetic method, 
which in its operative processes and fundamental 
principles is exactly like the phonic method, are the 
only methods which make it possible to give the child 
constructive problems; and the solving of a properly 
related sequence of constructive problems is the 
surest, the most natural, the most logical, the most 
effective, and the most truly pedagogical method of 
teaching any subject which is adapted for such teach- 
ing. Word recognition, by the phonic method, is ad- 
mirably adapted for constructive problem work by 
the child, and this is one of the strong reasons in 
favor of its adoption. 

If the word " Sam ^' be shown to a child, on the 
blackboard or on a card, he is required by the phonic 
method to solve a problem which is presented through 
his eye. This problem requires ability to recall in 



TEACHING TO EEAD 71 

regular order the sounds of '^ s/^ '^ a/^* and " m/' and 
unite them into one sound produced by a union of 
the three sounds produced so rapidly as to make 
them seem to be but one sound. The recognition of 
this word by any system except the phonic is purely 
an act of memory and not a constructive process. In 
ear problems, too, when the word is pronounced for 
the child and he has to make the visible form of the 
word out of the elements of sound and power that he 
has learned, he is solving a problem of a constructive 
character. 

If a child, taught by any whole word system, or 
even by the alphabetic or naming system, be asked to 
write the word " Sam,^' he does it purely by memory 
and not as the result of an independent constructive 
process. When the child learning by the phonic 
method has learned the sounds of ^' a,^^' " m,'^ and 
^^ s," the teacher may very properly ask him to write 
the word Sam. This is an ear problem in word recog- 
nition, which is the first step in learning to read. 
The child cannot write it from memory because he 
has never yet consciously seen the word he is ex- 
pected to write. If he has accidentally seen the word 
he has no idea of its name. He has a real problem 
to solve. First, he must analyze the word into its 
three elements by sounding it slowly, and as he 
analyzes he must remember the letter symbol that 
corresponds to each sound and write these letter 
symbols in their proper order to form the word. 

In both eye and ear problems, the child is doing 
productive and constructive work, and such problems 
cannot be given by any other method of teaching 
children to read. Both kinds of problems are of 
great value, but especially the ear problems. 

10. The phonic method co-ordinates reading, 



72 TEACHING TO EEAD 

writing, spelling and composition, more naturaUy, 
and more logically, than any other method. The ear 
problems train children to construct the spelling of 
all regular words and also of those words that have 
only regular irregularities in their spelling. Spell- 
ing reform is gradually removing the worst irregu- 
larities. Writing may be used in connection with the 
teaching of reading by any method, but the phonic 
method calls upon the child to write his own thoughts 
much sooner than is possible by any other method. 

11. The phonic method aids in securing distinct 
articulation in speaking. Each letter is expected to 
do its part in making the word. The child finds by 
his entire experience in learning to read that every 
letter, not silent, must be sounded, or the word will 
be imperfect. 

12. The phonic method prepares the child for 
learning to understand and to write shorthand when 
he is older. This is becoming a more important 
educational feature, and it will become more and 
more important in future. 

There are a few words such as " eight ^^ that can- 
not be taught by the phonic method. Their number 
is so small that they are not worthy of consideration. 
They may be taught after the child has learned to 
read, as a special lesson in spelling, or the child will 
read '^ eight '^ correctly the first time he sees it if it 
occurs in the sentence, " I can count one, two, three, 
four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten/^ or other 
sentences of a similar character. 



CHAPTER VI 

TEACHING HOW TO RECOGNIZE VISIBLE LANGUAGE 

When the pupils have been led to realize that the 
language they use orally may be represented in vis- 
ible form as explained in Chapter 11, the teacher 
has only two things to accomplish in training them 
to recognize language in its visible form : — 

1. She must teach the process of combining sounds 
to form words. 

2. She must teach the sounds and powers of the 
letters, and the sounds of vowels united as diph- 
thongs, and such combinations of consonants as th, 
and ng. 

All the lessons and exercises of the whole process 
of learning to recognize visible language, (what is 
usually spoken of as ^*^ learning to read/^) should be 
given with the view of accomplishing one or both of 
these purposes: — to reveal new letter symbols and 
associate them with what they say, and to develop 
the power of automatic combination of sounds. It 
is of the utmost importance that teachers should 
understand this fact definitely, and remember it 
always, in the preparation of the work for their 
pupils both at the blackboard and at their seats, but 
especially at the blackboard. If the teacher under- 
stands this clearly and never forgets it while pre- 
paring her lessons, it will make her work definite, 
and purposeful, and effective. 

73 



74 TEACHING TO EEAD 

The supreme aim in the work of learning to recog- 
nize visible language is to lead the child in the right 
processes of making the association of the proper 
sounds with their corresponding letter symbols cer- 
tain, and to make sound combination automatic. 
Both processes are simple, so simple, that a bright 
child eight or nine years of age can readily learn to 
read in a week, and an average child of that age will 
do so in a month, if properly taught. The process of 
combining sounds into words may be taught in a 
single lesson, and it should be the first lesson given. 
Learning the sounds of the letters will be an inci- 
dental part of the work and takes very little time. 
Nearly the whole of the time that has to be spent in 
learning to recognize visible language has to be de- 
voted to practices for the purpose of securing auto- 
matic and rapid power to associate correct sounds 
with the letters, and unite these sounds into words. 
The new things that the child has to learn are very 
few, and the new power is easily understood. The 
real work of learning to read consists in practice to 
make word recognition automatic, and the teacher's 
ability is shown by giving great variety to the prac- 
tices, by adapting them to the child's nature in the 
form of games and problems, and by taking them in 
the proper logical order. 

The First Step — Comlination of Sounds 

The combination of sounds, although it is the 
greatest step in learning to read, is really a very easy 
one for the children. It may be made a very inter- 
esting game for them. The teacher should begin 
somewhat as follows; '^ Point to the boy or girl 
whose name I say." She should then sound the 
words :^ S-a-m, N-e-d, K-a-te, T-o-m, N-e-11, etc. 



TEACHING TO READ 75 

The letters should not be named, the sounds alone 
should be given. The words should be sounded 
slowly; the pauses made between the sounds of the 
letters being at first very short. If no one catches 
the name, it should be sounded again, and if neces- 
sary the pauses between the letter sounds should be 
made shorter, until the word is said very slowly with 
little, if any, pauses between the letters. " Sam ^^ 
is a good word to begin with, because the sound of 
each letter may be continued for a time. This can 
be done with any vowel, but not with all the conso- 
nants. 

When the light breaks in upon the children, and 
they find that they can tell the name with the sounds 
separated, the most difficult step in learning to read 
has been taken. Gradually the pauses between the 
letters should be lengthened and in a few minutes 
the children have made two important discoveries. 
They have found out that what seemed to be one 
sound in their language is really made up of dif- 
ferent sounds united in proper order; and they have 
also learned that they can combine two or more 
sounds into one word. A third step may then be 
taken by allowing the children, in turn, to pronounce 
the names slowly and separate them into their ele- 
mental sounds. The teacher should suggest the 
names at first and choose easy words of not more 
than three letters. The same names that were used 
by the teacher in the first part of the exercise will 
be perfectly appropriate for the pupils, and each 
pupil may practice in turn on each word. The chil- 
dren should then in turn sound names chosen by 
themselves with pauses between the sounds. Words 
of four sounds may be used, when words of three 
sounds have been practised until the pupils can read- 



76 TEACHING TO READ 

ily combine the sounds to form the word or analyze 
the words into its component sounds. In a few min- 
utes a new class of a dozen children will be intensely 
interested in this game^, if it is conducted in a proper 
manner, and will be enjoying it thoroughly, while 
they are at the same time laying the foundations for 
the most essential powers in learning to read. 

The game may be varied by saying : " Do what I 
tell you — s-i-t, r-u-n, h-u-m, s-i-n-g, s-t-a-n-d, sh-ou-t, 
etc./^ or '' Hold up what I tell you — b-oo-k^ s-l-a-te, 
p-e-n, etc. ; ^^ or " Point where I tell you — u-p, 
d-ow-n, ou-t, etc.^' In the same way the teacher 
and pupils may sound the names of things in the 
room to see who can first find the thing named, 
and finally the teacher may sound with increasingly 
longer pauses any words commonly used by children 
and closely related to their experiences, and the 
pupils may also test their own power to give the 
sounds of any words they choose separately while 
their fellow pupils try to decide what the words are. 

One lesson of this character will be sufficient for 
bright pupils, but it is better to give a few short re- 
views with similar games so that all may become 
fairly proficient in them. The pupils should be able 
to recognize words quickly, when their elements are 
sounded separately at intervals, before any letter 
forms are associated in their minds with these 
sounds. 

The Second Step — Associating Letter Forms with 
Their Sounds 

When the process of combining sounds has been 
made clear to the children there is only one more 
step in the recognition of visible language, which is 
to give them the letter symbols for the sounds they 



TEACHING TO READ 77 

tave already been making and combining. When a 
child can combine the distinct sounds S-a-m into 
the word Sam^ and separate the word Sam into its 
three elements in the order of their occurrence in the 
word quickly and definitely, he is ready to receive in 
one lesson the letter forms that represent these three 
elements in visible language. 

After first explaining to the children that she is 
going to teach them to make the letters that repre- 
sent the sounds they have been making she should 
ask them all together to make the different sounds 
in '' Sam/^ and then to make the first sound and 
prolong it. She should give an illustration of what 
she wishes them to do. In fact most of her revela- 
tions in taking new steps should be made by illustra- 
tion and not by verbal explanation. When they have 
prolonged the first sound, the letter " s '^ should be 
written on the blackboard several times slowly, and 
the pupils should watch carefully while the writing 
is being done. The teacher should tell them that she 
is making the picture of the little boy that says the 
sound they have been making. Wh^n they think they 
can make it they should be allowed to try to do so, 
first on the blackboard and then on their paper or 
slates. They should not be expected to make their 
letters very accurately at first. The teacher should be 
satisfied when they know how the letter is made. 
The power to make the letters accurately will re- 
quire practice. The letters made by the teacher 
should be made correctly, and she should watch care- 
fully to see that each child begins to make each letter 
at the proper place; but she should not expect per- 
fection of form before she proceeds, and she should 
most carefully avoid making individual criticisms of 
the writing done by the pupils. She should make 



78 TEACHING TO READ 

the letter again on the blackboard^ if there is any 
real error to be set rights or she may ask one of the 
children to make it on the blackboard. The other 
children will watch with more interest while one of 
their classmates is making it. It is practice that is 
necessary to enable the muscles of the arm and 
fingers to produce in visible form the letter forms in 
the child's mind, not more explanations. When a 
boy who is learning to skate falls he does not need a 
lecture on how to maintain his centre of gravity 
above the base of support, nor will it do him any 
good to tell him he must not lean forward, nor back- 
ward, nor to either side. He knows how he should 
go, and he needs practice in order to be able to do 
what he wishes to do. Many teachers destroy the in- 
terest of the children both in writing and reading by 
persistently criticising the form of the letters they 
make when they are learning to read. The teacher 
should note general errors if there be any in the writ- 
ing for a future lesson in writing, but she should 
absolutely avoid reference to them during the read- 
ing lesson. She should be satisfied fully at first if 
the child writes so clearly that she can tell the dif- 
ference between s and m, and if she can be sure what 
the child meant to write. The fact that his teacher 
reads his writing and appears pleased with it, will be 
the best inducement to lead a child to write more, 
and by much writing he will learn to write, if his 
teacher gives him the proper conception of the letter 
forms. 

When ^^ s ^' has been made and the children have 
learned that this little boy says the first sound of 
^^ Sam/' the teacher should proceed with the second 
and third sounds as she did with the first, and in a 
few minutes, — surprisingly few, if they have had the 



TEACHING TO READ 79 

necessary practice orally in combining sounds to 
form words, and in separating words into their 
elementary sounds — they will be able to make the 
letters that say the three sounds in Sam. They knew 
the sounds before, now they know the two boys and 
the girl that make them. They have had a great 
revelation, but a greater one awaits them. " Write 
Sam,^' the teacher says, after they have been told that 
to wTite a word they have merely to separate the word 
into its sounds, speaking it very slowly, and write the 
boy or girl that says each sound as they make it. As 
soon as they are told to write " Sam '^ each pupil 
begins to say the first sound and holds it till he 
recognizes it. When they know what the first sound 
is they make the boy that says that sound. They 
sound the next part of the word in the same way and 
write the girl that says that sound, and so on with 
the last sound and its representative. They have 
gained a new power. They can make one word of 
their oral language visible. After this achievement, 
the teacher should say, '' Write ma/^ Some of them 
will hesitate, most average children will begin to 
sound the word slowly and write the letters that say 
the sounds they make. Even if none of the pupils 
started to do so the teacher may set them all to work 
by saying '' Sound the word ' Ma ^ slowly, and make 
the letters that say what you say.^^ After " ma '"^ 
the teacher should give the words " am ^' and 
" mam ^' which they may be led to write as they have 
written " Sam ^^ and " ma/^ Thus they learn the 
last step in the great revelation, which is that they 
do not need a new set of letters for every word, but 
that the same letters may be used to write many 
words. 

" S/' " a/^ and " m/' may be taught and used in 



80 TEACHING TO READ 

one lesson, after the proper preliminary training in 
vocal combination and vocal analysis. At the begin- 
ning of the next lesson, the teacher should give the 
pupils, as eye problems, the words they made in the 
first lesson as ear problems, by writing, " ma,'^ 
" Sam,^^ '' mam,^^ and " am ^^ on the blackboard that 
the pupils may tell what the words are. In doing so 
they have to do nothing new. They have been 
trained and practised already in vocal combination. 
They have now merely to say each for himself what 
the letters say in turn and combine the sounds thus 
made in the order in which they are made, and they 
have the word they are trying to recognize. The 
teacher may at first have to guide the little ones in 
taking this step, but once it is taken, the pupil is able 
to recognize visible language made out of the letter 
elements with which he is acquainted. He does it 
slowly, and by conscious effort, but he can do it in- 
dependently. He needs practice, but he has the 
golden key to literature, and practice will enable him 
to open all her doors. 

When the pupils are able to use ^^ s,'^ ^^ a," and 
'' m ^'' in both ear problems and eye problems, in 
writing the words that can be made with them when 
they are sounded, and in reading them when they are 
written, a new letter form should be taught. As a 
new tool should never be given to a child till he is 
conscious of the need of it, so a new letter form 
should not be given to a child till he has been made 
conscious of the need of it. '' Write Sam ! ^^ " Write 
ma ! '' " Write am ! '' " Write mam ! '' These four 
problems have been given and solved, as a prepara- 
tion for the next step. " Write sat," may be given 
as the next problem. Each child will start as usual 
to sound the first part and make the letter that says 



TEACHING TO READ 81 

that sound. In this way they get " sa — /^ but when 
they make the last sound in " sat '^ they can go no 
further. They make the sound correctly, but they 
have no visible symbol for it. They turn to the 
teacher, some laughingly, some hopelessly. Their 
faces reveal their dilemma. " Do you not know the 
boy that says that sound ? ^^ Would you like to meet 
the boy that says it ? ^^ Of course they would. 
^^ Here he is, then. Watch me make his picture '^ ; 
and " t '^' is added to the little family who are going 
to help the children to read. He at once fills his 
place at the end of '' sat.'^ The teacher does not ask 
the class to sound '' i^^ separately. She gives them 
another word to write at once, another ear problem 
requiring the use of " t.^^ " Write mat ! '' And after 
^' mat '^ is written, other ear problems follow. ^^ At,^' 
^' tat,^^ '' tam,'^ '^ tata,'^ may all be written now. 
Each word that is written reviews the use of other 
letters, and the complex process of sounding the 
parts separately as they occur, and writing the letters 
that say these sounds is becoming more simple. The 
analysis of the ear problem becomes easier, the asso- 
ciation of letter symbols with sounds becomes more 
definite, and the forms of the letters become more 
familiar and more accurate. 

^^ Write sap,^^ leads to the introduction of another 
little friend who soon proves to be a very useful 
friend indeed. The child has five little friends, four 
boys and one girl, now. With these five friends he 
can make, am, at, pa, ma, Sam, sat, sap, mat, map, 
mam, pat, pap, tap, tat, tam, mamma, papa, tata, 
mast, past, taps, pats, tats, tams, mats, maps, stamp, 
stamps, — twenty-eight words in all. 

No new letters should be taught until the children 
have acquired a ready facility in solving both ear 



82 TEACHING TO BEAD 

problems and eye problems with the five letters, s, 
Si, m, t, and p. 

When they can use these five letters rapidly and 
definitely they have learned all they can ever know 
of the processes of recognizing and writing visible 
language. The problems will be extended and made 
more difficult as they proceed by the introduction of 
more boys and girls, and their combinations, but the 
processes of solving the problems will remain the 
same. The pupils now have two new powers and 
they long to use them. Xew boys and girls may be 
introduced rapidly now. Bright pupils of eight or 
nine years of age will learn all the letter powers in 
a few days, and use them in making and recognizing 
words. When the race is wise enough to refrain from 
teaching reading to children till they are about nine 
years of age, there will be no more primers published. 
There will be much more interesting: and attract- 
tive literature published for children, and as soon as 
they have acquired the powers of phonic analysis 
and phonic combination, and have become acquainted 
with the boys and girls that say these sounds of their 
language, and can use them, they will begin to read 
good stories. They will read at a moderate rate at 
first, and they will do so by conscious effort; but 
they will learn to read by reading after they have 
mastered the fundamental and very simple processes 
of recognizing and writing visible language. In a 
surprisingly short time they will be able to read with- 
out giving their primary attention to the recognition 
of words. 

The children should never be asked to tell the 
name of a letter at any time, while they are learning 
to read. The names of things should never be taught 
by drill processes in any subject. No such mistake 



TEACHING TO EEAD 83 

is ever made outside of a school. Teachers who re- 
member how the names of things are learned before 
children go to school should never make the blunder 
of trying to teach names by direct process or of ask- 
ing children to repeat names as names. The child in 
the home has learned the name of every article he 
has used or seen used no matter how long or how 
hard the name may be, without ever having had a 
lesson on names of things, or being asked to name 
them. He learned the names incidentally by hearing 
them used in connection with the things. No mother 
ever says to her child, " This is a spoon, dear ; now 
tell mamma its name.^' " This is a chair.'^ " This 
is a cup,^' and so on through the long range of 
articles in the home. No intelligent man or woman 
ever did such teaching outside of a school. It is 
just as ridiculous in school as it would be in the 
home, w^iether we ask for the names of rocks, or 
trees, or flowers, or parts of plants, or of letters. 
The child heard the names of things used inciden- 
tally before he went to school. His parents said, 
'' Pass me a knife,^^ or '' a plate,^^ or " a spoon,'^ or 
"a cup of tea.^^ All the things used in the home 
were named as they were used, when names were 
necessary. They were never named for the sake of 
teaching their names, yet the child knew their names 
even before he could speak them. He learned the 
names ^^ telephone,'^ ^^refrigerator,'' and ^^gasolier," 
as easily as the names ^^ dog," ^Mamp," and ^^boot 
Names should be learned in school in the same way 
they are learned at home. 

The teacher should use the names of letters just 
as the names of things are used in the home, or in 
everyday life anywhere. She should use the name 
of a letter when she needs to use it to refer to it 



J9 



84 TEACHING TO EEAD 

in any way. She should say^ '' S always says/'' or 
'' What does ' s ^ say ? ^^ or " Write V/' but she should 
never point to a letter and say " What is the name 
of this letter?'^ or ask for the name of a letter in 
any other way. The pupils will learn the names of 
the letters much more quickly if they are not asked 
to learn them, and are not asked to give them, but 
are just allowed to learn them as they have been ac- 
customed to learn other names, by using them and 
hearing them used. 

Steps in Making Word Recognition Automatic 

The aim of the teacher should be to enable the 
pupils to recognize words automatically, that is with- 
out conscious effort, so that they may be able to give 
their primary attention to the thought when they 
read. They cannot do this at once. Whether they 
are solving ear problems or eye problems, they should 
be allowed at first to sound the letters aloud in the 
order in which they occur. They require to do this 
to get clear perceptions of the sounds of the letters, 
as a basis for definite conceptions, and in order that 
they may learn to combine the sounds of the words 
properly in eye problems, and find out what sounds 
they have to represent visibly in ear problems. As 
in teaching all other subjects in which it is possible 
to begin by giving the pupils the early steps by per- 
ceptions, the perceptive stage should be passed as 
soon as possible. This is a universal law, and it 
therefore applies in reading as in other subjects. 
The child must begin by sounding aloud what the 
letters say, but he should continue to sound them 
aloud only until the letter is definitely associated 
with what it says. 

There are four natural stages in the process of de- 



TEACHING TO EEAD 85 

velopment from the sounding or perceptive stage to 
the silent or automatically conceptive stage in either 
ear or eye problems. These stages are in both 
cases : 

1. Sounding aloud what the letters say. 

2. Whispering the sounds. 

3. Consciously thinking the sounds. 

4. Automatic association and recognition. 

The third stage should be reached as quickly as 
possible. Some children reach it in a few days. The 
third stage passes into the fourth gradually as the 
result of practice. 

Problems 

A problem that reaches the child's mind through 
its ear may be called an ear problem, and one that 
is grasped through the eye may be called an eye 
problem. Word recognition has in the past been 
learned almost entirely through the eye, but ear prob- 
lems are much more effective in aiding the child to 
associate the letters with what they say than eye 
problems. The child has more to do in solving an 
ear problem than an eye problem. He has to separate 
the word to be written into its elements by sounding 
it ; he has to decide what letters '' say the sounds ^^ 
as he makes them; and he has to write the letters 
in their proper order. This makes the association 
of the letter with its sounds very definite. There is 
no other method of fixing facts, or principles, or 
associations in the memory that is so effective as using 
the hand to work out or represent them. When the 
mind of a child has to guide the hand, the intellectual 
effort must be definite, and the result on the memory 
is more positive and more lasting than if no 
productive or constructive effort is made. Ear prob- 



86 TEACHING TO EEAD 

lems are of great value, too, because children are 
made happy by the ability to write words themselves. 
The teacher may use the child's joyous pride in the 
acquisition of this power to sustain and develop his 
interest in reading, spelling, and writing so that these 
studies never become wearisome. 

Ear problems should precede eye problems, not 
only in preparing the children for phonic combina- 
tion and phonic analysis, but in the work of defining 
in the child^s mind the association between each new 
letter and what it says. When each new letter is in- 
troduced it should be used first in solving ear prob- 
lems. The need of the new letter can best be revealed 
by giving an ear problem that cannot be solved with- 
out it, that is a word that cannot be written with the 
letters already known. When the pupils find a sound 
for which they have no letter representative they are 
ready for the new boy or girl letter. In the early 
stages of learning to recognize visible language most 
of the teaching done in class at the blackboard should 
be done by ear problems. 

Eye problems are simply problems in recognizing 
words or sentences that are new to the children, and 
translating them into oral language. In ear problems 
the pupils make visible language to correspond with 
the oral language used by the teacher. In eye prob- 
lems the pupils use oral language to correspond with 
the visible language made or shown by the teacher. 
Eye problems should be given to the children both 
when they are out in class, and when they are at their 
seats, as soon as they are far enough advanced to be 
able to try to read silently from cards or books, con- 
taining suitable reading matter for them. 

A great variety of problems may be given to the 
pupils for work at their seats even in the very early 



TEACHING TO EEAD 87 

stages of their progress in word making and word 
recognition. The following are illustrations of many 
problems that may be given for seat work: 

Make as many words as you can with these let- 
ters — a, 0, m, p, t, s, and be able to use each word 
in speaking to the class, if called upon to do so. 

Make as many words as you can beginning with 
m, or p, or s, or any other letter. 

Make as many words as you can beginning or end- 
ing with st, sh, or any other combination. 

Fill in the blanks to make as many words as pos- 
sible — m — p, s — p, p — t, r — sh, or te — , ne — , fa — , 
or — nd, — sh, — rt. , 

There is practically no limit to the variations that 
may be made of each problem for work, while the 
pupils are at their seats. 

When pupils are fairly well advanced a good exer- 
cise for seat work is to start them with a word, say 
'' corn/^ and ask them to make as many words as 
possible by changing one letter at a time in consecu- 
tive order, for instance, corn, born, barn, bars, cars, 
card, hard, hand, band, bend, lend, mend, send, sent, 
tent, tens, hens, etc. When they are far enough ad- 
vanced this problem may be given still more definitely 
by saying " Change ' corn ^ to ' bend ^ with as few 
changes as possible.^^ 

In the early stages of the work of learning to 
read the problems may be given in the form of in- 
teresting games which will give the children oppor- 
tunities for amusement while they are learning to 
make and recognize words. Each pupil may be made 
to personate a letter by having it written on a slate 
which he holds in front of his breast. If slates are 
not used the teacher may have a set of cards with the 
letters painted on them, to hang around the necks 



88 TEACHING TO EEAD 

of the children, or to be fastened in front of them. 
The following are among the many ways in which 
ingenious teachers may use this method of assigning 
problems in reading: — 

1. Pupils stand in a row, teacher names those who 
are to step out, they face the class as they are called 
out, and the pupils name the w^ord made by the let- 
ters on their slates. 

2. Exactly the same as (1), only that pupils in 
turn do the w^ork of the teacher. 

3. Same as (1) or (2) with the understanding 
that all those called out stand with their backs to 
the class until the word is completed, and turn 
around for a few seconds in the order of the letters 
of the word. The pupils see the letters in order and 
only one at a time. 

4. Exactly as in (3), only instead of turning one 
at a time the pupils forming the word turn at once 
and turn again in a few seconds, the teacher indi- 
cating the time, and shortening it as the pupils ad- 
vance. 

5. Same as (4), but the class turns instead of the 
pupils forming the word. They have their backs 
turned to the word until it is ready. 

6. Same as (5), but the teacher writes the word 
on the board instead of forming it with pupils. 

7. Pupils change the word by sending one more 
letter pupil to the front. 

8. Pupils change the word by sending one pupil 



9. Pupils change the word by rearranging the pu- 
pils already in the word. 

10. Pupils change the word by sending one pupil 
to the class and substituting another in his place. 
(More than one may be changed). 



TEACHING TO EEAD 89 

11. Teacher names a word and calls on a pupil to 
bring out the right pupils to make the word. 

12. Teacher names a word and pupils come them- 
selves in the proper order to make the word. 

13. Two or more pupils may be given the same let- 
ter. The teacher names a word — say " mat.''' As 
soon as the teacher says '' one/^ every child with " m " 
on his slate steps out from the line and turns around. 
At ''two'' those with ''a'' and at ''three'' those 
with " t " step out and turn round. 

14. Same as (13)^ except that the "m" children 
should select the children that represent the next let- 
ter, and they in turn should choose the children who 
are to follow them. 

The most tactful teacher will have greatest variety 
in problems for her class. 

These games may be played with a whole class and 
several pupils may represent the same letter. When 
the teacher or the pupil who is leading names a 
word the pupils stand up in turn as the teacher 
says — " one/' " two," " three," etc. Pupils who fail 
to stand promptly when theirs is the next letter, or 
who stand when they should not do so, may be put 
out of the game. Sides may be chosen for matches, 
and the pupils may raise their hands or step a pace 
forward when they are required to represent the next 
letter. 

Suggestions Regarding the Best Way to Introduce 

the Letters to the Children 

1. As has been already explained the pupils should 
never be asked to give the names of the letters. The 
names should be used by both teacher and children, 
but there should be no drill on the names of the let- 
ters'. See page 83. 



90 TEACHING TO EEAD 

2. The teacher should use the expression ^' M 
says— '^ ''S says—'' or "What does 'm' say?'' 
" What does ' s ^ say ? ^'' and so on with the other let- 
ters. 

3. Each teacher should investigate for herself to 
decide what the letters really say, by sounding short 
words very slowly and noting carefully what part of 
the oral word is represented by each letter or com- 
bination of letters. The words chosen for this prac- 
tice should have no silent letters. 

4. It will be of great service to the teacher to make 
a classified list of the consonant sounds. The defini- 
tion commonly given of a consonant is a very mis- 
leading and very absurd definition. " To say that 
a consonant is a letter that cannot be sounded with- 
out the aid of a vowel " is clearly incorrect. The 
letters p, t, and k make no sound and do not demand 
even an expulsion of breath except at the end of 
a word. But even if the statement made in the defi- 
nition were correct it is manifestly a weak way to 
define anything by telling what it does not do. The 
proper way to define anything is to state its class 
and explain what it really does — what its function 
is — so that it may be distinguished from others of 
its class. The use of the consonants is to indicate 
organic formations in using oral language. Oral 
language is produced by changing the position of the 
vocal organs so as to modify the stream of breath 
as it passes from the lungs either as breath only, 
or as breath made into sound. The vowels repre- 
sent the various sounds; the consonants indicate the 
ways in which the organs are placed to stop the 
stream of sound or breath either partially or entirely, 
or to direct it through the nose. A perfect alpha- 
bet would indicate the organic formation by the form 



TEACHING TO EEAD 91 

of the letters^ and indicate also whether the stream 
from the lungs is breath only or voice, and whether 
the stream has to be stopped fully or partially, and, 
if only partially, whether the escape of breath or 
voice is through the mouth or the nose. Such an 
alphabet was invented by Professor Alexander Mel- 
ville Bell and has been used with great success in 
training deaf mutes to use oral language. 

The simplest scheme for making a classification 
of the consonants that will be of most service for 
teaching purposes is to divide them first into sound 
and breath consonants. Any teacher can do this; 
and it will be a most interesting lesson for the pu- 
pils of the higher grades to co-operate with the 
teacher in deciding to which class each consonant 
belongs. The decision may be arrived at unerringly 
by choosing short words and sounding them slowly 
and deciding in regard to each consonant in turn. 

When all the consonants have been classified into 
sound modifiers or breath modifiers, they should be 
further subdivided into those which stop the stream 
of sound or of breath partially, and those which stop 
the stream of sound or of breath completely. As 
those which stop the stream only partially may be 
continued as long as a single exhalation continues 
they may be named " continuous ^' to distinguish 
them from those that we cannot continue to make 
because the passage of air from our lungs becomes 
completely stopped by the organic construction which 
they demand. The letters m, n, etc., may be sounded 
as long as we can continue to breathe out; such let- 
ters as b, d, etc., can be sounded only a short time 
as there is no way of escape for the sound during 
the organic formation which they represent. When 
the letters have been classified as recommended the 



93 



TEACHIXG TO BEAD 



teacher should record them for her guidance in a 
table as follows: 



Sound. 


Breath. 


Continuous. 


Stopped. 


Continuous. 


Stopped. 


m 


b 


s 


t 



It will be exceedingly interesting to construct a 
table of pairs of consonants in which the organic con- 
struction of each pair is exactly the same, the dif- 
ference between the letters in each pair being that 
in one case only breath is used and in the other 
case sound. In f and v, s and z, and similar pairs 
the organic construction is the same. The teacher 
may prove this to herself by first making the power 
of " f '^ and then without in any way changing the 
organic construction^ making a sound with her vocal 
chords. If she does so she will find that she is mak- 
ing the sound of " v." The digraph '^ th ^^ will give 
a fine illustration of the change made by retaining 
the same organic formation and changing from 
breath to sound if the teacher will first start to pro- 
nounce " think/^ and after dwelling on the " th ^^ in 
this word, will without changing the organic forma- 
tion say " though.^' The only change made in the 
'' th '^ is the formation of a sound with her vocal 
chords while she retains the first organic formation. 

The complete tables are omitted in both cases be- 
cause the real knowledge of the subject will come to 
the teacher by constructing the tables instead of by 
committing to memory tables constructed by others. 



TEACHING TO READ 93 

This law should be followed by teachers in teaching 
other subjects in which tables have to be used, when 
they may be formed by the experimentation or in- 
vestigation of the pupils. The writer has tested 
many classes of students in training classes by ask- 
ing them to construct tables as directed, and in every 
case with excellent results. One of the most grati- 
fying results of such tests is the fact that in every 
test the students had difficulty in deciding in regard 
to "h/'' and in every case some of them had suffi- 
cient faith in the result of their investigations to de- 
cide definitely that ^^ h is not a consonant.^^ Having 
made the distinction between '' sound '^ and ^^ breath ^^ 
consonants clear, by experiments and the construc- 
tion of tables, it is a very simple matter to lead a 
class of students to discover for themselves that ^' h '^ 
is a breath vowel as Professor Alexander Melville 
Bell decided long ago. 

5. In beginning to teach the recognition of visible 
language it is better to use continuous consonants 
because the children can continue to make the sounds 
or powders of the letters long enough to get clear per- 
ceptions in regard to them. The importance of this 
is manifest. Clear perceptions form the basis of all 
real progress. Indefinite perceptions give indefinite 
conceptions, and trying to deal with indefinite con- 
ceptions in any subject must discourage and confuse 
the child, and mav weaken his intellectual power for 
life. 

6. One of the commonest mistakes made in teach- 
ing by the phonic method is to make a sound or al- 
low the breath to escape before the organic forma- 
tion for a letter is complete. Several books pub- 
lished in England by distinguished educators con- 
demn the phonic method because they say " it is but 



94 TEACHING TO READ 

a clumsy alphabetic method in which the letters are 
called um^ pu, tu, etc., instead of em, pee, tee, etc/' 
In three works on teaching, this objection is given 
and in each case the same letters are used as il- 
lustrations. This leads to the conclusion that one 
man wrote the objection and the others copied it. 
Three thinkers may separately discover the same 
truth, but it is highly improbable that three men 
ever separately reached the same conclusion, when 
it was an error, and used exactly the same illustra- 
tions as a basis for their wrong conclusions. Un- 
fortunately for the phonic method many teachers at 
first tried to sound the letters and drill on them sep- 
arately. This must lead to incorrect speaking and 
improper articulation. The consonants make no 
sound whatever either before the organic formations 
they represent are made, or after these formations 
are changed. The breath consonants make no sound 
even while the organic formations last. It is an 
error to say um or mu for ^^ m ^\ it is a gross error 
to say ut or tu for "t^^ because ^H'^ makes no 
sound. ^^ Sound ^' consonants do modify sounds, and 
the sound of ^^ m '' for example should escape 
through the nose while the organic formation it 
represents is continued, but neither before nor after 
the organic formation. In the stopped sound con- 
sonants, such as ^^ b ^' and ^' d ^\ the sound cannot 
escape but is formed in the larynx. The teacher 
must from the first carefully train the children so 
that they will make no sound and allow no breath to 
escape when sounding or making a letter, either be- 
fore the organic formation is made, or after it has 
been changed. Each letter should act only while its 
organic construction continues, and it should have 
no effect whatever at any other time, except when it 



TEACHING TO READ 95 

is the final letter, in which case there is a slight ex- 
pulsion of breath in some cases. To make any sound 
before the organic construction for a letter begins, 
or after it ceases, makes it very difficult to teach the 
process of phonic combination so as to unite letter 
sounds to form words. The children are not likely 
to form any bad habits of giving extra sounds or 
too much breath in connection with the consonants, 
unless the teacher drills on the sounds as individual 
sounds. 

The children should be taught to make the conso- 
nants say just what they say in combination with 
other letters to make the words of which they form 
a part. The failure to do this has been one of the 
chief causes of difficulty and lack of success in using 
the phonic method. Teachers must be always on the 
alert to prevent the habit of using either sound or 
breath before the organic formation of the letter 
is made or after it ceases. Some teachers have dif- 
ficulty in cultivating their own habit of definite ear 
attention so thoroughly as to notice and correct errors 
in this department of their work. 

In speaking, the organic contact necessary to form 
the consonants is instantaneous. Oral speech is a 
very remarkable illustration of the perfection of the 
human organism, if we consider the number of 
changes made in the positions of the vocal organs in 
an hour. The number of changes necessary to utter 
a single sentence, and the ease and accuracy with 
which they are made are especially worthy of note. 
One of the clearly defined purposes of the teacher 
should be to train the children to make the organic 
consonant formations continue for the shortest pos- 
sible time. This will be of great assistance in acquir- 
ing the power of phonic combination. The sound or 



96 TEACHING TO EEAD 

breath power of a consonant should be made long 
enough for the children to get a clear perception of 
it, when it is first introduced to them; but in using 
it from the first the aim should be to make it for 
the shortest possible time in which the formation 
can be definitely made. There should, of course, be 
no hurry in speaking, and no part of a word that 
says anything should be omitted or partially sounded 
or made. Every part should be uttered, and every 
formation should be made definitely, especially the 
last consonant sound in the word, but to prolong 
the consonantal effects destroys the perfection of oral 
speech. The failure to form the organic construc- 
tions represented by consonants definitely and ac- 
curately causes defects in enunciation; to continue 
the organic constructions too long causes improper 
pronunciation. 

To dwell too long on the organic construction of 
consonants may cause the habit of stammering. 
Nearly all stammering is caused by continuing the 
formation of the stopped consonants too long. Stam- 
mering caused by the continuous consonants is 
usually much more easily cured than stammering 
caused by the stopped consonants, because the sound 
or breath escapes during the organic lock of stam- 
mering in the case of the continuous consonants, 
while in the case of stopped consonants the stream 
of sound or breath accumulates and helps to con- 
tinue the organic lock. The first thing to do in 
curing stammering is to train the stammerer to make 
his organic formation automatically instantaneous, 
and to stop the habit of trying to break by extra 
pressure the organic locks that cause stammering. 
The stammering lock is caused either by imperfect 
breathing power, a weak nervous system, or lack of 



TEACHING TO READ 97 

deflniteness in the brain action necessary in think- 
ing. Very few children, and indeed very few adults 
can either inhale or exhale properly when breathing. 
All children may be trained, and should be trained, 
to breathe deeply and to inhale and exhale smoothly 
without spasmodic action of the diaphragm. This 
may be done easily and successfully, and a healthy 
child who has been trained to say " ah ^' for forty 
seconds with a single breath effort may be cured of 
stammering in a very short time. All he requires is 
specific practice to make his organic formation auto- 
matically rapid in making a few of the consonants. 
The child whose thinking is not done definitely stam- 
mers because his brain does not send messages with 
sufficient clearness to the vocal organs. He must 
be trained to think definitely. The child whose 
nervous system is not in good order stammers be- 
cause the communication between the organs of 
speech and the brain and neurologic centres is not 
properly carried on. The imperfection is some- 
times the result of an accident in early childhood, , 
and is often caused by a poor condition of general 
health with poor nerve nutrition. Children who 
stammer from this cause need exercise in the open 
air and an improved diet. They may require medi- 
cal treatment. They should certainly be examined 
by a wise physician. But whatever the remote, or 
organic cause of stammering may be, the immediate 
cause is a lock in the organic construction corre- 
sponding to some of the consonants, the worst of 
them being usually the stopped consonants. The 
teacher should, therefore, teach the children to make 
the organic formation corresponding to the conso- 
nants quickly as well as definitely. 

7. For reasons already explained, the teacher 



98 TEACHmO TO READ 

should, so far as possible, associate a real personality 
with each letter. She should speak of a new conso- 
nant as " a new little boy/' and of a new vowel as 
" a new little girl.'' The letters as they are learned 
may be placed in a house or in a garden which may 
be represented by a rectangle drawn in an upper cor- 
ner of the blackboard, so that they may live in the 
house or play in the garden. When a new letter is 
to be introduced, a friend of his, one of the letters 
already known, may be brought out to meet him, and 
the class may salute the new letter by saying what 
the old letter says, and the teacher may respond by 
saying what the new letter says, after which they 
are both brought into the garden or house, and the 
new letter is introduced to the others, the teacher per- 
sonating the old letters as they are introduced, and 
the pupils personating the new letter. The children 
will learn the powers of the letters more definitely 
and more rapidly by means of some such game as 
this, than by any other process, especially by any 
process of drill. 

8. As soon as a letter has been introduced to the 
old letters it should be used. The teacher should 
first give ear problems and then eye problems in- 
volving the use of the new letter, and then the pupils 
themselves should in turn be allowed to think of 
short words that require the new letter to speak in 
order to form them, and the rest of the class should 
write these words. With any means such as has been 
described of arousing and retaining a vital interest 
on the part of the pupils the work of learning what 
a letter says is very easy and takes only a very short 
time. A more realistic association may be given in 
the case of some of the letters by associating their 



TEACHING TO EEAD 99 

sounds with what certain other things say, when the 
children themselves can suggest the similarity. 

In teaching the forms of the letters the same gen- 
eral principle should be applied as far as possible. 
The letters should be spoken of as individuals, and 
their parts associated with some common things. 
For instance " m " may be a boy with three legs, or 
it may be made with three canes ; " n ^^ a boy with 
two legs or made with two canes; the crossing of 
" t '^ may be its necktie; and so on. 

9. When the family of letters becomes too large 
for one house they may be placed in different houses. 
Letters that exactly correspond in organic formation 
as " t ^' and " d '' may be placed in one house ; the 
letters that are formed with the lips or lips and 
teeth may be placed in another house, those made 
by the tongue and teeth in another, those made at 
the back of the mouth in another, and those that 
send the stream of sound or breath through the nose 
in another. 

Some teachers keep each letter in a separate house 
so that the children may play games in forming 
w^ords. The teacher and the children in turn give 
words to be made, and the pupils in turn take the 
pointer and rap on the doors of the letters in the 
proper order to make the words. The teacher, or 
a selected pupil, writes the letters on the blackboard 
in succession as they are called upon to form the 
word. The game may be varied by allowing each 
child to write the letter at whose house he rapped. 

Some teachers cut out cardboard brownies to rep- 
resent the letters, and make the letters on the bodies 
of the brownies. The brownies with whom the chil- 
dren are acquainted stand in a row above the black- 
board, or in some other place, where they may be 



100 TEACHING TO EEAD 

easily seen. The introduction of a new brownie may 
be made a pleasing and interesting ceremony. The 
vowels should, of course, be girl brownies. 

10. Whether the letters are brownies, or ordinary 
boys and girls, or just letters living in little houses 
in a row at the top of the blackboard, the vowels 
should be made in colored chalk to make the distinc- 
tion more definite. 

These suggestions are made as illustrations of the 
plans that may be adopted with great advantage. 

Methods of Taking Answers in Class 

The teacher should carefully avoid taking answers 
in such a way as to allow one pupil to lead or guide 
another, or to make it possible for the slower pupils 
to follow the lead of those that are brighter. In 
harmony with the fundamental law of self-activity 
each pupil should think and answer independently. 
It will not do to let the names of words be spoken 
aloud as soon as they are discovered, or the slower 
pupils will get little development and they will be 
trained to rely on others and to give as their own, 
answers worked out by others. It is astonishing how 
instantaneously pupils in a class will catch the an- 
swer given by a leader in simultaneous answering. 

When giving ear problems, slates are better than 
paper for use by the children, but pads may be 
used. The teacher simply says write " smart ^^ or 
^^ tramp,^^ or some word that contains only known 
letters, and each child proceeds to write. When done 
each child holds up his slate or pad, and the teacher 
says " right,^^ or " wrong,'^ or marks with chalk or 
pencil. The word should then be sounded slowly 
with a pause after each sound to enable those who 
were not right to suggest the proper letters to repre- 



TEACHING TO EEAD 101 

sent the sounds as they are made to form the word. 
The marks are not given to classify the pupils, but 
to the child they mean success and the teacher^s 
recognition of it. These are two important elements 
in keeping alive the " prospering ambition ^^ of chil- 
dren. 

In solving eye problems, the pupils should raise 
their hands when they think they have solved the 
problems given, and as the hands are raised the 
teacher should step in front of each pupil, place an 
open hand on each side of the child^s mouth to pre- 
vent others hearing, and lean forward to allow the 
child to whisper the word or sentence that has been 
written on the board. A smile or the shaking of the 
head will indicate the result to the child. 

If wrong the child at once tries again to find 
where he has gone wrong in either ear or eye prob- 
lems. These exercises guided by a good teacher will 
develop as much concentration of effort and enthu- 
siasm as any exercises that can be given in school, not 
excepting even the plays of the school-grounds. 

It is of the highest importance in teaching all sub- 
jects that the slower or backward children should re- 
ceive more direct attention than those who are 
quicker or more advanced. It is of great importance, 
too, that the bright pupils shall not be held back 
while the others are receiving special attention. No 
child should be trained to work at a low rate of 
speed, when he is capable of working at a high rate. 
It is therefore a good plan, when about two-thirds 
of the time of the reading lesson has passed, to give 
either ear or eye problems rapidly and allow the 
first pupils who give correct answers to go to their 
seats, and proceed with other work which has been 
assigned for them. If the class be large, two or 



102 TEACHING TO EEAD 

three pupils may be sent to their seats by the solving 
of each problem. In this way the teacher will soon 
have the pupils left who need most guidance and 
most practice^ and she will be able to discover the 
special difficulties that have prevented the more back- 
ward pupils from making more rapid progress. By 
grading the problems to the standard of ability of 
the slower pupils, by giving them a great deal of 
practice, and by sympathetic encouragement, those 
who may have difficulty in understanding the proc- 
esses of word recognition may be aided in taking 
the early steps and thus become independent read- 
ers. 

When the pupils have fairly mastered the proc- 
esses of word recognition, it is a good plan to make 
the tests given at the close of the lesson contribute 
as much as possible to rapidity of recognition. 

The pupils may be asked to stand with their 
backs to the class till the word or sentence is written 
on the board and to turn at a signal from the 
teacher. 

The pupils may be asked to go to sleep — to shut 
their eyes — while the teacher writes the word or 
sentence, and wake up at a signal. 

A number of words or sentences may be written 
on the board and covered with a curtain so that 
as the curtain is raised one word or one sentence 
may be exposed at a time. 

An exceedingly good plan is to write the letters 
one at a time in the order in which they occur in the 
word, while the pupils are watching, and after allow- 
ing each letter to remain on the board for a short 
time to erase it before writing the next letter. This 
develops a high degree of alertness of attention and 
quickness of mental action. 



TEACHING TO EEAD 103 

The teacher may develop the same alertness and 
quickness by taking a pointer and pointing to the 
letters in their houses, or to the brownies in the 
order in which they come in the words. This would 
have to be done slowly at first, and only short words 
should be used till the pupils have had considerable 
practice. 

The pupils will be delighted to have the oppor- 
tunity of taking the pointer and rapping on the 
doors of the letter houses to form words which they 
wish to give as rapid eye problems to the rest of 
the class. 

It is an excellent plan when taking the class to 
let the first two or three who answer correctly come 
out of the class to assist the teacher in examining 
the written work of the other pupils in ear prob- 
lems, and in hearing the whispered answers of the 
other members of the class when eye problems are 
given. This is a capital exercise for those who are 
called out; it saves time; and it is a stimulus for 
all to work hard in order to secure the honor of 
assisting the teacher. 

Teaching the Vowels 

The short sounds of the vowels should be the only 
sounds taught while the pupils are taking the early 
steps in reading. All the processes of recognizing 
visible language may be taught and should be taught 
with but one sound or power for each letter. It is 
best to begin with only one vowel and to teach no 
other until several consonants have been taught. The 
best order to teach the vowels is a, o, e, i, u. This 
order is suggested because the short sounds of " a '^ 
and ^^ o '^ may be prolonged more easily and more 
definitely than the short sounds of the other letters. 



104 TEACHING TO BEAD 

In the case of " a ^^ the sound given should not 
strictly speaking be the short sound but the sound of 
^' a '' in " ah/' The only sounds of the vowels that 
it will be necessary to teach till the children can 
read freely are the short sounds and the long sounds. 
The children will recognize all the words of the 
language^ if they are taught only the short and the 
long sounds of the vowels. It is entirely erroneous 
to assume that children should be learning how to 
pronounce words when they are learning how to 
recognize visible language. When the pupils are 
older they should receive careful training in all the 
sounds of the vowels and the diacritical marking of 
the dictionary accepted as authority in the school 
which they attend^, and absolutely correct use of 
vowels should be insisted upon. Even from the first 
day the pupils should have practice in correct pro- 
nunciation of words commonly mispronounced. No 
day of school life should ever pass without some 
practice to improve the speech of the pupils by se- 
curing greater accuracy of enunciation, and more 
perfect clearness and pureness of vowel tone. The 
teacher should not make a point of correcting each 
child's errors as they are made. This course humil- 
iates and discourages sensitive children. The mis- 
takes should be noted, and lists of words including 
the vowels that are commonly used incorrectly should 
be practised by all the pupils during the time set 
apart for this purpose. The teacher's own pronun- 
ciation should be as perfect as possible, and the pu- 
pils will learn to use vowels correctly by hearing 
them used correctly. 

But the process of learning to recognize visible 
language, by whatever method the pupils are taught, 
is not, and cannot, logically be made a process for 



TEACHING TO BEAD 105 

teaching pupils to pronounce correctly. Pupils may, 
of course, reveal their imperfections of speech dur- 
ing a reading lesson^ as they may during a lesson 
in arithmetic or any other subject, but it is just 
as unwise to correct these imperfections during a 
lesson in the recognition of visible language, as to do 
so when the pupils are learning to add. The mis- 
takes made in the use of language should be cor- 
rected during the time set apart for language, and 
the errors in pronunciation should be corrected dur- 
ing the period set apart for pronunciation. 

" Every lesson should be a language lesson." Yes ! 
Every lesson should afford opportunities for the pu- 
pils to use language orally or in writing or in both 
ways, but to make every lesson a time for correcting 
mistakes in the use of language interferes with the 
progress of the pupils, not only in the subjects 
being taught but in pronunciation and in the cor- 
rect use of language. If when a child has read a 
paragraph or stanza, he is told that he has given an 
incorrect sound for '' a ^' in " fast,*' and " father," 
and " aunt," and that he has used the anterior " c " 
in '^ calm," instead of the posterior " c," and sounded 
only one " r " in '' barrel," which forced him to use 
the wrong sound of " a " in both '^ calm " and 
^^ barrel," and if he is asked to read his paragraph 
or stanza again and make the corrections after the 
correct sounds have been given to him, he is not 
taught wisely either in reading or in pronunciation. 
When he '' reads it again " he is not thinking of the 
strength or beauty of the thought he has to express 
and how to express it so as to make the clearest and 
deepest impression. He is trying to remember the 
shades of the sounds of '' a " and the correct way 
to pronounce ^^calm" and ^'barrel." His power of 



106 TEACHING TO EEAD 

thought expression is weakened, and his pronuncia- 
tion, if improved at all, is improved in the least 
effective way by such teaching. 

When the child is learning to recognize visible 
language it is unnecessary and unwise to make him 
conscious of the fact that the vowels have so many 
sounds and shades of sounds. The English boy, the 
German boy, and the American boy give different 
sounds to the vowels and in many cases different 
powers to some of the consonants. The process of 
learning to recognize visible language should not 
be a process of training these three boys to give ex- 
actly the same sounds to vowels, and the same 
powers to the consonants. Learning to read is a 
process of learning to recognize in visible form the 
language already used orally. 

In a new class of ten pupils beginning to learn 
to read it is quite probable that no two of them give 
exactly the same sound to " a ^' in " f ast.'^ It would 
not help them in the slightest degree to recognize the 
visible word " fast ^^ if they could all pronounce the 
word correctly. It would be a total waste of time 
for the teacher to try to make them all pronounce 
^^ fast '^ in the same way, so far as the recognition 
of the visible word ^^ fast ^^ is concerned. The sound 
of " ah ^^ that has been given to them will suggest 
to each child the sound of " a ^' that he has been 
accustomed to use in his oral language in pronounc- 
ing ^^fast.^'' 

In the process of learning to recognize visible 
language two vowel sounds, the short sound and the 
long sound, are all that are necessary to enable the 
children to recognize all the words in their lan- 
guage, and this is what the first stage of learning 
to read really means. jSTearly all the primers that 



TEACHING TO READ 107 

have been prepared have given a page to each vowel 
sound, a page to each diphthong, and a page to each 
peculiar combination of letters such as th, ng, tion^ 
sion, etc. It may be wise to devote a lesson to each 
peculiarity, but it is quite unnecessary to do so in 
the case of the vowels and the diphthongs. 

When the pupils have used the short vowel sounds 
till they are able to recognize freely, and write quickly, 
words in which short or kindred sounds are the only 
vowel sounds used, they are ready for a lesson on 
the long sounds. A single, short lesson is sufficient 
to teach the long sounds of all the vowels. All that 
is to be learned is contained in the single statement 
which the teacher should make : " These little girls 
sometimes say their own names.^^ A few illustra- 
tions should be given, and then the pupils should be 
told that when the girls have a " hat ^^ on, or a 
'' shade '^ over them they '' say their own names.^' 
The dash over the letter may be to the children a 
'' hat ^^" or a ^^ shade.'^ It takes no longer to teach 
that all the vowels ^^ say their own names ^^ some- 
times than to teach that any one of them does so. 
Indeed it is easier to teach that all the girls say 
their own names when a '^ hat " or " shade ^^ is put 
over them than to teach that one of them does so. 
A general principle is more readily accepted than 
a special rule. 

The dash to indicate the long sound is easily made 
by the teacher in eye problems. Even the dash re- 
quires to be used for only a short time in practice. 
The thought association enables the pupils to decide 
whether the vowels say their own names or not. If 
the teacher writes the sentence : " Sam^s hat is on 
the table,'^ the children will need no mark over ^^ a '*' 
in " table ^^ to enable them to pronounce it correctly 



108 TEACHING TO READ 

after they have learned that the girls do not always 
say the same thing. Indeed the most logical way to 
lead the children to see that the vowels do not always 
say the same thing is to give them short sentences 
to read in which the vowels say more than one sound. 

Some teachers prefer to write the vowels with 
colored crayons when they say their own names. This 
makes a good variety in eye problems, and eye prob- 
lems are the only problems in which it is absolutely 
necessary to use any method of distinguishing the 
long sound from the other sounds. When the chil- 
dren are writing the words it is not necessary to 
indicate which sound the vowels have. The teacher 
has indicated that by pronouncing the words. It 
is only in eye problems that the marking of even 
the long sound needs to be done, and even this should 
not be continued long. 

When the sounds of ^^ o ^'' in such words as " move ^^ 
or '' love ^^ are met with it is only necessary to tell 
the pupils that '' o ^^ sometimes says '' oo/' and at 
other times speaks like '^ u.^^ It is even better to 
let the children find out these facts for themselves 
by writing simple sentences such as '^ Tom loves his 
mamma.'^ The pupils will speedily find that the 
long sound of ^^ o ^^ does not make the right word, 
and they know what the word should be, because 
the " 1 ^^ and '' v ^^ give the key to it. When the 
pupils have clearly realized the fact that the letters 
do not always say the same thing, and have had 
considerable experience in using vowels with more 
than one sound, a general statement that " a ^^ some- 
times speaks for " e,'^ ^^ i ^^ some times speaks for 
^^ e,'^ '^ e " sometimes speaks for '^ a,^' or " o,^' and 
" o '' sometimes speaks for " u,^^ will be sufficient to 
account for the few words such as " said,'' " ma- 



TEACHINa TO READ 109 

chine/' " eight/' '' sew/' and " love." The few un- 
usual irregularities of the language need not be con- 
sidered as difficulties. The children should be good 
readers before they meet with them at all^ and when 
they can read they will have to be pretty stupid to 
pronounce " sew " with '' ew " as in '' new/^ or " ma- 
chine " with the sound of long " i " in such a sen- 
tence as "Jane sews her dresses with a sewing 
machine/' or if they fail to pronounce " eight/' and 
" again " correctly, when they are asked to read: 

^^ One, two, three, four, five, 
I caught a hare alive ; 
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 
I let him go again/"' 

The fact is, as shown by experience, that the pu- 
pils will read such sentences as these without being 
conscious that " e," or " i/' or " a/' are saying any- 
thing unusual, if they are able to read freely before 
such irregularities are given them to read. There 
are so few of these irregularities that the pupils may 
be able to read nearly all of the words in our lan- 
guage before they are introduced to words in which 
the vowels speak for other vowels, or say anything 
very peculiar. 

Tlie Diphthongs 

The diphthongs do not require a separate lesson 
for each diphthong. Nearly all the necessary teach- 
ing about diphthongs may be done in one or at most 
two lessons. One lesson may be devoted to the com- 
ing together of two girls w^hen only one of them 
speaks. In improper diphthongs it will be found 
that the first girl is usually the one that speaks. 
The teacher may take a list of words such as sail, 
pail, fail, rain, pain, gain, maid, paid, or hear, near, 



110 TEACHING TO BEAD 

meat, seat, neat, bean, lean, read, lead, oar, soar, coat, 
goat, coal, goal, moan, loan, hoe, etc., and by a series of 
experiments lead the pupils to make two discoveries: 
first, that in each case the first girl says her own 
name, and second, that the second girl says nothing. 
They may thus be led to make a general law, which 
will have exceptions, that when two girls come to- 
gether, if the second is silent the first usually says 
her own name. They should in due time be sho\^n 
that this is not always true by such examples as 
head, meant, said, their, etc., but it will help them 
to overcome more than half their difficulties with 
diphthongs to learn that when two girls come to- 
gether in the same syllable the second girl usually 
says nothing and the first says her own name. They 
may be shown in the same lesson that if the two 
girls are in the same syllable or the same small word 
the same rule is nearly always followed, by taking a 
list of words such as: hat — hate, kit — kite, pet — 
Pete, not — note, cut — cute, etc. In every such case 
the second girl will say nothing, and the first will 
say her own name. The pupils may be led to dis- 
cover this in a few eases in which the teacher gives 
hate, kite, Pete, note, cute, etc., as combined eye and 
ear problems. For a time in using improper diph- 
thongs or short words ending with " e ^^ silent it is 
wise to draw the crayon through the silent letters, 
when eye problems are given to the pupils. Silent 
consonants may be marked in the same way. It is 
not really necessary for the pupils to draw a line 
through the silent vowels when solving ear prob- 
lems. A good kind of problems to fix this lesson in 
the minds of the pupils is to ask them to make words 
in two ways as pail and pale, sail and sale, pain 
and pane, lain and lane. 



a 



TEACHING TO READ 111 

The second lesson about diphthongs should show 
that when two girls come together they sometimes 
sing a duet. When they do this they make a real 
diphthong or a proper diphthongs each making a 
sound and uniting these sounds into one sound. By 
taking out, pout, our, sour, flour, count, oil, soil, 
toil, etc., the teacher will be able to show the chil- 
dren in one short lesson that the girls in ^^ ou ^' and 
^^ oi,^^ when they come together sing a duet. By 
sounding ^' o '' and ^^ u '' in quick succession the 
sound of ^^ ou '^ will be produced, and by sounding 
''' '^ and ^^ i ^^ in quick succession the sound of ^^ oi ^"^ 
will be produced. When ^^ w '^ and ^^ y '' come after 
^^ o '^ they sing duets with " o '"^ just as ^^ u '^ and " i ^^ 
do. 

N'early all the proper diphthongs are formed by 
uniting the sound of *^^ o ^' with that of another 
vowel, either *^ 1 ^' or " u ^\ or ^^ y ^' and ^^ w ^^ taking 
the place of " i '' and " u ^\ so that children will 
very easily learn to distinguish the duets from the 
solos when two girls come together. The diphthongs 
^^ ou ^^ and ^^ ow ^' occasionally sing solos and not 
duets, as in slow, grow, snow, ought, etc. 

The diphthong " eu ^^ or ^^ ew ^' in such words as 
^^ feud,^^ or ^^ new," may be taught as a duet by the 
union of long ^^e " and " oo," but as long " u " is a 
diphthong itself made by the union of long ^^ e '^ and 
^^ 00 " the diphthong ^^ eu " or " ew " may be regarded 
as a solo in which the second girl speaks instead of 
the first. 

The diphthong ^^ ie '' is peculiar. Both letters do 
not speak at the same time, but sometimes " 1 '^ 
speaks and sometimes " e ". In words of one syl- 
lable ending with ^^ e "', such as pie, tie, etc., the 
^^ i " follows the general rule and does the speaking ; 



112 TEAcnma to read 

in most words^ however, such as brief, grief, thief, 
believe, etc., the " e '^ speaks and not the " i '^ In 
^' ny ^^ the second girl does the speaking. In '^ ey ^' 
the first girl speaks but it says long " a '\ 

Two vowels may stand together without forming 
either a proper or an improper diphthong. When 
they come in separate syllables they cannot be united 
into one sound or influence each other so as to pro- 
duce one sound. The pupils will make this dis- 
covery for themselves in the course of their reading. 
It is unwise to confuse the children with details of 
this character. 

The two great facts which require to be taught to 
the children in connection with diphthongs are: 
first, that when two girls come together it is usually 
the firstonly that speaks ; and second, in most cases, 
the first on^ says Tier own njime. The proper diph- 
thongs are so'^ few and theif combined sound so 
clearly what the two letters say in rapid succession 
that they give very little trouble. 

Although all the general principles connected with 
the diphthongs could be explained in a single les- 
son, it is better to teach the improper diphthongs 
first and practice them for a time till the children 
can use them readily both in ear problems and in 
eye problems, before teaching the proper diphthongs. 

It may be of service to the teacher to remember 
that long ^' i ^^ as well as long " u ^Ms a diphthong. 
Long '' i ^' is composed of " ah '' and ^' ee ^' said very 
quickly, and long '' u '^ is made by '' ee ^' — '' oo ^^ 
Some would spell long " u ^' by using " y ^'' — " oo ' 
instead of '^ ee ^^ — " oo.^^ There is very little dif- 
ence in the organic formation of long " e ^^ and the 
consonant ^^y^\ 



TEACHING TO EEAD 113 

Capital Letters 

There need be little difficulty in teaching the cap- 
ital letters. They may be spoken of as grown up, 
or in any other familiar way. When a child has an 
idea clearly it does not confuse him to give him two 
forms to represent the idea. A young child will 
learn to speak two languages, if father speaks to it 
in one language and mother in another. A child 
who has learned music by the Tonic Sol Fa nota- 
tion will learn the staff notation in a single lesson if 
it knows music. Over and over again, large classes, 
not one pupil of which has ever had a lesson in the 
staff notation, have been taught a single lesson of 
half an hour's duration in public, and have im- 
mediately sung correctly two part music at sight 
that was written in the staff notation specially to 
test them and brought direct from the printing press 
to the hall. So it will not confuse the children at 
all to give them both forms of the letters, the cap- 
itals and the small letters. Neither is it at all 
confusing to give the children both the script form 
and the printed form. For a short time after the 
pupils begin to study visible language, that is until 
they have learned the process of recognition, they 
need not use capitals. 

''A'' and ''The'' 

These words give most teachers a good deal of 
trouble in the primary classes. The reading of 
younger children is usually spoiled by dwelling too 
long on " a '^ and ^^ the/' and thus making them 
prominent. Many teachers give their pupils the 
short sounds of the vowels in these words, hoping to 
improve the reading. This teaching does not ac- 



114 TEACHING TO EEAD 

complish the desired result, and is inaccurate. The 
vowels have not the short sounds in these words, and 
it produces very incorrect speaking to try to give 
the short sounds. The trouble results from reading 
'^ a ^^ and '' the ^^ as separate words. If they are 
spoken separately they should be pronounced cor- 
rectly by giving '' a ^^ and '' e ^^ their long sounds. 
The vowels are obscure, and the words should be 
read subordinately. The child should be trained to 
read '^ a ^^ and " the ^' as if they were syllables in 
the words that follow them. They should not speak 
them until they know the words that follow them, 
and should read them as unaccented syllables of 
these words. 

The over emphasis and prolongation of these words 
is one of the bad results of reading aloud too early. 
This forces the child to give too much emphasis to 
the smaller and less important words. The chil- 
dren use '' a ^^ and '' the '^ correctly in their oral 
language before they go to school. They have to be 
trained to give a drawling emphasis to them by wrong 
methods of teaching. 

In training children to use ^' sl '^ and ^^ the '^ prop- 
erly when reading, it is a good plan to write on the 
blackboard the sentence, ^^ It is a brush ^^ and ^^ It 
is the brush,'^ omitting the word '^ brush,'^ and hold- 
ing a real brush in the position of the word ^^ brush.'' 
The pupils should then read the sentences in answer 
to the teacher's question, ^^ What is this ? '' When 
they have read the sentences correctly with the real 
brush instead of the word, other things may be sub- 
stituted for the brush, and the correct reading learned 
in a similar way. The pupils should look at the 
sentences, when they are answering the teacher's 
questions. When a number of articles have been 



TEACHING TO EEAD 115 

used, and the pupils are able to read the sentences 
as they have been in the habit of speaking them, 
the brush should be again used and then the word 
brush should be written in its place and the read- 
ing done by a few of the pupils individually. If any 
one prolongs or over emphasizes the '' a '^ or " the,'^ 
ask him to read it again while the brush is held over 
the word " brush/' The names of the other words 
should be written in in turn and the practice con- 
tinued until the sentences are read correctly by 
every pupil. 

It is a good plan to have such a sentence as the 
following on the blackboard for occasional practice : — 
'' A bird sat on a branch of a tree in a garden near 
a house on a fine day, and sang a sweet song for its 
mate in a nest.'' Practice in reading such a sen- 
tence will help to prevent the formation of incorrect 
habits of reading words separately and therefore 
over emphasizing the short words, and will remedy 
the defects of those who have formed incorrect 
habits through wrong methods of teaching. The 
children may be taught to read by phrases by using 
such a sentence, and asking questions that may be 
answered simultaneously by the whole class : " What 
sat?" '^A bird." '^ Where did it sit?" "On a 
branch." "On a branch of what?" "Of a tree." 
" Where was the tree ? " " In a garden." And so 
on. The pupils read only the words in the sentence, 
and they are trained to read in phrases and inci- 
dentally to see that the words in a short phrase should 
be read as nearly as possible like one word. The 
words in the phrase "in a tree," are as closely re- 
lated as the syllables in the word " incomplete," and 
they should be as closely related in oral speech or 
in reading. 



116 TEACHING TO EEAD 

The method of emphasis in the phrases should 
correspond with the method of accenting the sylla- 
bles in a word. We naturally pronounce our words 
with proper accent — not by giving additional force 
to the accented syllables but by obscuring or giv- 
ing less force to the unaccented syllables. The 
prominence of the accented syllables is given by good 
speakers by shading down the unaccented syllables, 
and the necessary prominence of the word represent- 
ing the dominant idea in a phrase, should be secured 
in the same way. Too often children are trained to 
secure emphasis by making a special effort on the 
emphatic word and raising it above the normal tone 
of good speaking. The proper method of securing 
emphasis — the natural method — is to give less force 
and time to the unemphatic words, instead of more 
force to the emphatic words. Emphasis is a matter 
of relative force, and the best way to secure it regu- 
lerly, in ordinary conversation, or in oratory, is to 
train children to read as cultured men and women 
speak, by relatively obscuring the unimportant words. 
They should have a great deal of practice in read- 
ing sentences composed of short phrases, and they 
should be trained not to speak the subordinate words 
of a phrase until they know the leading word to 
which the subordinate words are directly related. 



CHAPTER VII 

EXPRESSION 

The true basis of expression is self-expression. 
More than this the logical reason for teaching ex- 
pression or developing expressive power is that it 
may be used in self-expression. Expressive power 
in reading should be developed by training the chil- 
dren to be regularly more expressive in all their 
oral language. 

The fundamental element in oral expression in 
speaking or reading is the power of personation. 
This power should be developed until it becomes 
automatic, and the reader unconsciously assumes the 
character he is to represent, or the mental or emo- 
tional condition revealed in the selection he has 
read. Children love personation. They enjoy games 
in which they have to personate different characters. 
They personate animals, at first, better than they 
do the varied types of human character. The story 
of " Father Bear, Mother Bear, and Baby Bear,'' in 
which each of these leading characters uses exactly 
the same language, is an excellent story for practice. 
The whole class may be divided into three groups, 
one group to represent the father, one the mother, 
and one the baby. The teacher may relate with as 
much dramatic effect as possible the story leading 
up to the surprise of the bears on their return, and 
then each group should represent, as well as it can, 

117 



118 TEACHIXG TO EEAD 

the tones of father, mother, and baby, as they ex- 
press their feelings. Then the individuals in each 
group may take their part in turn. The groups 
should take a different part each day. Other stories 
in which animals are represented as holding con- 
versations should be used regularly in primary 
classes, to give the children practice in personation. 
They soon commit short animal dialogues to mem- 
ory, and they never tire of trying to personate the 
animals effectively. 

^Mien they have practised the personation of ani- 
mals for some time, children enjoy, very heartily, 
the privilege of imitating street criers. " Fresh fish, 
all alive ;^^ ^^ Bananas ripe ten cents a dozen ;^^ 
" Any rags to-day ; '^ etc. : or the commands given to 
soldiers, such as " Eyes right, cress I ^"' '^ Eyes front 
— Quick march ! ^^ etc. ; or farm calls such as " Co 
boss I Co boss I Co I Co I Co 1 '' or such calls as a 
fire alarm, '^ Fire I Eire I Fire I '^ Probably no other 
lesson can arouse as much spirited enthusiasm as a 
lesson of this kind in personation and imitation. 
The children themselves should suggest the various 
calls and alarms, and volunteers should be called 
for in each case to be tested in their ability to per- 
sonate and imitate. The pupils should be allowed 
to applaud every one who does specially well. It will 
not be long before such an exercise relieves the chil- 
dren of their weakening self-consciousness so fully 
that the shyest and most restricted children will 
stand to take part. When they have once conquered 
their timidity, and have lost their restraining con- 
sciousness of self, they are on the highway to free 
expression. Such exercises often make remarkable 
character transformations in a few days. They are 
of great service, too, in developing the imagina- 



TEACHING TO EEAD 119 

tions of the children in addition to their value in the 
cultivation of freedom in expression. 

Frequently the teacher should write on the black- 
board such sentences as : '' Oh, mother ! I am so 
glad to see you ! ^^ and tell a story of a child who 
was away a long time from home^ and who, when 
she came back and met her mother, rushed into her 
arms and said — . The teacher should stop at " said/^ 
and call upon the pupils individually to finish the 
story by reading the words on the blackboard. By 
the use of similar short stories all the emotions may 
be called forth, and their expression developed in a 
natural way as self-expression instead of formally. 
The emotion expressed should be real to each child, 
and not assumed. If the story be short and told 
dramatically there should be no doubt about the 
reality of the emotion, and reality in such cases is 
vital. Dramatic expressions such as : " Oh ! mother, 
come back to me ; ^^ " Don^t dare to touch my sister ! '^ 
^' He has stolen my top ; ^^ I never was so happy in 
my life; ^^ '^ You know I love you, mother; '^ " I am 
sorry I did it, father ;^^ ^^ Here Prince, jump, old 
fellow;'' and scores of others that will suggest them- 
selves to every teacher may be written on the black- 
board to be read by the pupils, when the climax of 
the story is reached by the teacher. 

Many of the nursery rhymes and nursery tales 
make excellent matter for expressive recitation by 
little ones. 

Such short poems as Eiley's " The Goblins will 
git you if you don't watch out,'' and '' Seeing things 
at night," afford fine opportunities for the develop- 
ment of variety of expressive power. 

Short stories, either funny or dramatic, should be 
told to the children, and then told by individuals 



120 TEACHIXG TO EEAD 

of the class. The same stories may be told over and 
over again without losing their interest, each child 
tn'ing to improve the telling. All will be willing 
to take their turn, if the teacher becomes a leader 
in applauding instead of criticising. Xo criticism 
should ever be made, under any circumstances, of 
the method of telling the story, or of imitating or 
personating. 

Criticism of personal effort always weakens inter- 
est, and if interest is lost the vital element in tme 
progress is lost. 

The children should be trained to choose the best 
stories, and to tell stories they have heard at home. 
In certain cases it may be wise for the teacher to 
hear the stories before they are told to the class. 

Very useful tablets for primary classes may be 
made by pasting colored pictures of bears, roosters, 
cats, dogs, soldiers, firemen, and other animals and 
men on large cards. A most interesting game may 
be played by calling one child to the front and al- 
lowing him to take the pointer and name certain pu- 
pils who are to stand up and imitate what the ani- 
mals or men say as he points to them on the chart. 
He should point to one of the pictures, say the 
rooster, and call upon several boys and girls to crow 
like a rooster. There is a great deal of fun and 
quite as much profit in the development of expres- 
sive power in such an exercise. Pictures from Christ- 
mas picture books may be used in making the 
charts. 

It is an excellent plan to write a series of ques- 
tions on the blackboard and keep them covered with 
a curtain until the time for expressive practice. 
^' What is your favorite game ? '' '' On what street 
do you live ? '' " How old are you ? '^ " What flow- 



TEACHING TO EEAD 121 

ers do you like best ? ^^ '' What tree do you like 
best ? ^^ " How many sisters have you ? ^^ '^ How 
many brothers have you?^' These and many other 
questions may be written and remembered. When 
the curtain is drawn the teacher simply says : " Num- 
ber 7, John/' " Number 3, Mary/' and so on. The 
pupils do not read aloud a word of the questions. 
The pupil named stands after he has silently read 
the question whose number was given^ and answers 
the question in a complete sentence. This is an im- 
portant preliminary step introductory to reading 
aloud. As the pupil is not required to name the 
words he looks at^ he is not compelled to cultivate the 
habit of saying words without thinking of their mean- 
ing, or very little about it, and thus to form the 
habit of reading without expression. The teacher's 
plans should not only prevent the cultivation of 
habits of expressionless reading, but they should give 
the most thorough training possible in rapid silent 
reading. The plan of answering aloud the questions 
that are written, combines a training in silent read- 
ing with good oral self-expression. The two essen- 
tial elements in a good oral reader are the power 
of rapid silent reading and the power of self-expres- 
sion, and any plan that secures both of these elements 
in a single exercise should be used as largely as pos- 
sible. 

Instead of a series of questions the teacher may 
sometimes write a series of instructions such as 
'' Eecite your favorite poem ; '' " Tell the best short 
story you have heard ; '' " Tell us the most remark- 
able experience you have had this week ; ^'' or ^' Sing 
a verse of your favorite song.'' 

The pupils may be asked to write questions or 
give directions for oral work, and at a signal these 



122 TEACHING TO BEAD 

may be exchanged and answered or obeyed. This 
may arouse intense interest. 

It is a good exercise to choose the most expressive 
exclamatory sentences or phrases in the reading les- 
sons or in stories that are related by the teacher 
or by pupils, and ask the class to speak these sen- 
tences so as to give as many meanings as possible 
by changing the expression. Even a single word 
may be made to give several meanings. The word 
'^ oh ! ^^ for example, may be used to express the 
meaning of whole sentences of varied meanings by 
giving it different shades of expression. 

The true method of teaching expressive reading 
is based on three laws : 

1. Children are naturally expressive in speech and 
gesture. 

2. They may be made more expressive both of emo- 
tion and thought by freeing them of self-conscious- 
ness and developing their imaginations. Both these 
results may be attained most effectively by dramatic 
personation. 

3. When forceful expression has become habitual 
pupils express properly when reading what they are 
capable of extracting from visible language. 

It is of vital importance that a good reader should 
have two powers: the habit of forceful expression 
in conversation, and the power of rapid, accurate, 
and comprehensive thought extraction from visible 
language. He expresses most who sees most to ex- 
press. Great power to read silently is the most es- 
sential element in good oral reading. 



CHAPTER VIII 

VARIETY IN READING MATTER FOR PRIMARY CLASSES 

It is wise to have as great variety of good primers 
as possible. The primers to be excluded are those 
in which the illustrations are objective instead of 
subjective, and are intended to suggest words or 
thought to the children. The pictures should not 
suggest words or the thought in the lessons. They 
should arouse and sustain interest in reading, but the 
words should be recognized by the independent power 
of word recognition that has been given to the pu- 
pils, and the thought should be gained from the 
reading matter and not from the pictures. The pic- 
tures in a primer may be used profitably, if the 
teacher asks her pupils to write stories about them 
before they have read the lessons they are intended 
to illustrate. 

But the best reading matter for primary classes 
should be home made. Thousands of stories told in 
a few lines may easily be collected, and mounted 
on small cards. These cards are invaluable for silent 
or oral reading. The best use that can be made of 
them is to let the children read them silently and 
then stand and relate the stories in their own lan- 
guage. Day by day the time allowed for reading 
the stories should be gradually and slowly reduced. 

Each school should have an unlimited supply of 
good white cards about six inches long and four 
inches wide. The pupils in the primary classes 
should write stories of their own as soon as they can 

123 



124 TEACHING TO EEAD 

write. The best of these should be chosen by the 
teacher, or composite stories made by combining' the 
best elements in two or more of them. These should 
be given to the highest classes in the school and 
written by the pupils in these classes on the white 
cards, leaving room for illustrations at the top of 
the cards. The illustrations should be made by the 
senior pupils. It is a good plan to allow several 
pupils to design pictures to illustrate the same story 
and to choose the best design and allow its maker 
to draw it on the card. In this way the primary 
teacher will gradually accumulate a collection of the 
most interesting stories for children: those written 
by the children themselves. The pupils in the higher 
classes will have the best kind of practice in de- 
signing and good practice in writing. For very young 
pupils the teacher may cut the cards into strips, and 
write short sentences on them. The little ones 
should be allowed to step out of the class and tell 
the teacher what the cards say, taking their places 
in line and coming to the teacher in turn. 

Stories written by pupils in the second or third 
classes often make very interesting reading matter 
for the first classes. 

Good editions of fairy tales, folk stories, myths 
told in simple language, and nursery rh5anes, should 
lie on the teacher^s table, or stand on the shelves of 
the little class library to be read by the most ad- 
vanced pupils, as soon as they are promoted to the 
class of honor in reading. It will be a great in- 
centive to a pupil to know, that when he reaches a 
certain standard of excellence he will be allowed to 
take a book from the library to read it at home. 

In cities and towns, reading matter may be ex- 
changed by the schools. 



JUN 11 190§ 



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